


To Speak of Holy Things

by releasetheglitch



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, a smidge of humour, and a dab of kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 09:24:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 45,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5122895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/releasetheglitch/pseuds/releasetheglitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>And through his witness, everything that has ever been, and will eventually be, shall never cease to exist.</i>
</p><p>Once upon a time, an angel fell for a spy. He tore the wings from his back and the holiness from his flesh so that he may walk with Man, and the spy thwarted Death so that he may stand at the angel's side. So the two lived happily ever after.</p><p>Oh, if only it were that simple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mistflyer1102](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistflyer1102/gifts).



> Written for mistflyer1102 as part of the 00Q New Year Party Exchange! The prompt was:
> 
> Bond investigates the disappearance of another agent when something happens to him and Q has to sneak out of London to rescue Bond.  
> \- Q has a supernatural ability that he's kept a secret until now.  
> \- They've been together for little over a year.  
> \- The threat(s) to the agents is (are) of supernatural origins.
> 
> Ahem. So...as you can see, I expanded on the original premise quite a bit (the finished fic is about 50K long.) I really hope that you like what I've done with your prompt! And this is my first long fic, so I'm praying it won't disappoint :)
> 
> *deep breath* Alright, here we go...

“He’s going to die.”

The other angel blinked several of his six thousand eyes, rumbling dismissively. “That is what humans do, Qaphsiel. They’re fragile. Weak. Every human on the face of this planet will perish before you or I do. This is the way our Father intended it.”

“I know, Samael. It’s just…”

“Do not forget our mission, brother. Matters of life and death are not for us to dictate.”

Qaphsiel looked up, aware that his brother had already disappeared into the Fold. Though he could still make out the other angel’s voice from the midst of the Heavenly Host, singing his song of destruction and wrath.

Sighing, he returned his awareness to the human sphere. Being the watcher of the cosmos was a lonely job, and there were times when Qaphsiel wished he had been assigned a different role. Like Haniel, who presided over joy and desire. Or Jophiel, who guided the hands of artists. What must it be like to give birth to such splendor?

Qaphsiel’s role was simply to watch. To observe. He saw Babel fall and empires rise. He watched his sister take the hand of a days-old infant and guide her to peace while her family wailed. He waited as their structures grew taller and taller, and fancied that they were building a bridge up to the heavens to meet him. One day, he knew, he would see the planets crumble and fade into nothingness. He would be there when the New Kingdom arose, though that would not be for some time yet.

There was a human proverb that went something like this: If a tree fell in a forest and no one was around to see, did it fall at all?

An absurdity. Qaphsiel saw all. And through his witness, everything that has ever been, and will eventually be, shall never cease to exist.

Yet lately, there was one particular human that Qaphsiel’s awareness returned to, over and over again. Keeping track of individual humans was difficult, but he sought him out all the same, his wings rippling in excitement every time he caught sight of the familiar soul. Although, from the reactions of the other humans, this particular one was considered more attractive than most, so perhaps he could not be faulted on his interest.

Blond hair. Blue eyes. Male. Symmetrical features. These were not the things that drew Qaphsiel’s attention to him. Throughout history, there had been millions of men who had similar physical attributes as James Bond. No, what really ensnared him was the man’s soul.

There had been millions of men who, in physicality, had been as objectively attractive as James Bond. There had been none whose soul was as beautiful as his.

Of course he was not the only human with a splendid soul. There was the child in Mali, who seared light onto Qaphsiel’s grace every time he turned to face her. There was the ex-convict in Greece, who, despite his tribulations, had a soul that sparkled like firecrackers. There was even that one elderly man in Tibet, warm and comforting like the sun itself.

They were all beautiful, in their own ways. But their beauty was easy. Predictable. And after millennia of vibrant beauty as theirs, Qaphsiel was no longer affected by such sights.

But Bond. Oh, Bond. James Bond’s soul did not have the untainted beauty of those saint-like humans, and Qaphsiel knew this, intimately. Bond wore violence like a second skin, kissed away bloodstains like cheap wine. Qaphsiel could sense the haze of death that tailed the man, always just one step behind him.

HIs soul was mottled gold and black, stained with a lifetime of killing. But there was an easy grace to the way it undulated through the air, hypnotic and dangerous at once. When Qaphsiel gazed upon it, he felt like he was standing on the edge of a precipice, leaning dangerously close to the edge.

Angels were not supposed to interfere in the affairs of humans, but Qaphsiel found himself returning to the man again and again. Though he was not allowed to heal the man’s body, he stayed as James Bond cried out in his sleep and reached out for imaginary weapons. He stayed as the people around him left him, one by one, until the only intimacy James sought was in the flesh of strangers. Still, he’d like to believe that he offered the tortured man a bit of comfort, on some subconscious level.

But lately, Qaphsiel worried. A dangerously human emotion, but he worried nonetheless.

James Bond’s liver was under considerable stress. Qaphsiel wasn’t sure why he continued to consume the beverages that wreaked such havoc on his organs, but it was a common phenomenon amongst humans. His lungs held only a fraction of the capacity they used to. His bones had been broken so many times, Qaphsiel could see the fissures in each one, trace each back to a particular time and place. He didn’t sleep well, didn’t speak to the majority of his coworkers, didn’t seem to care whether he lived or died.

He was in the grips of another nightmare now. Qaphsiel could reach into his head, see the sad eyes of a woman falling backwards into dark water. Feel his anger and hatred and sadness and desire. The array of human emotion was dizzying, far too subtle and complex for a being of pure energy to grasp.

As the woman fell away from James’ grasping hands, Qaphsiel could feel a piece of himself start to fall along with her.

It was dangerous. If any of the other angels knew that his impartiality was compromised, he could be punished. After the strikes on Sodom and Gomorrah, after Lucifer fell and after the world flooded with divine fury, it was agreed that angels would no longer walk on Earth, would no longer allow themselves to emphasize with humans. These days, the only ones who still mingled with them were the few who guided human creations of art, music, philosophy. And Qaphsiel was definitely not among their ranks.

Yet, there was James Bond, body battered in the name of patriotism. Such a fragile concept, ‘Queen and Country.’ But there was nobility, nevertheless, in his devotion.

Furtively, Qaphsiel cast his awareness into the Host, grace stretched thin enough that they could not feel his gentle probing. No one was paying attention to him. No one would know.

He sent just a sliver of grace down to earth, smiling faintly as it sank into James’ body. It was not enough to repair the years of damage done to him, but hopefully James would sleep without dreams for a while to come.

And James slept on, mind finally silenced for the first time in years, unaware of Qaphsiel’s interference. Qaphsiel watched. As he always did.

***

Things came to a head in Istanbul.

“Watching the human again, Qaphsiel?” His brother joined him, casting a barely interested glance onto the train where James Bond fought for his life. “Ah. It won’t be long now. Azrael will be getting ready.”

Qaphsiel ignored him, glaring at the young woman who was preparing to take her shot. He could see clearly how it would go. The bullet would miss its intended target and hit James. He would fall into the icy cold water, unconscious from shock and blood loss, body eaten away by fish until nothing was left of James Bond but an empty grave and a stack of paper reports.

Qaphsiel wanted to smite the woman. James deserved better than that.

“He will be welcomed into heaven and be at peace. You should return to your duties, Qaphsiel. Sentimentality is a human weakness, not meant for us to experience.”

Samael wasn’t cruel, at least by angelic standards. He simply didn’t care about the ephemeral existence of humans—a fair point, considering Qaphsiel had been like him not five decades ago. Qaphsiel couldn’t find it in himself to be angry at his brother’s dismissive attitude, especially not now, when every second could be the last one his human ever took.

His human.

He wasn’t sure why he was so drawn to the man, or why he cared so much about his impending demise. All he knew was that he felt a twisting emptiness in the core of his grace, scraping at his insides, whenever he reminded himself that James Bond would never walk the earth again.

Qaphsiel remembered the date and time of every definitive event in human history, but he couldn’t remember when he started to see James Bond as more than an interesting soul. There was grace in humanity, never as apparent as when he watched James leap off the top of a building and cling to a jut in the stone. He wanted to feel the weight of that brilliant gaze on him. He wanted to meet the woman that has been like a mother to James in so many ways, and a commander in others. He _wanted_ , and that fact alone made him realise that this interest was already out of control.

Angels were soldiers too, in a way. Qaphsiel thought that he and James had a lot in common. He thought he would like to find out if that was the case.

The woman fired. James jerked backwards, blue eyes widening in surprise, and Qaphsiel made his choice.

“Qaphsiel, stop what you’re doing immediately!”

He spun, meeting the furious eyes of Samael. The song of the Host quieted as it sensed the tension crackling between the two.

“Leave me, this is my choice,” said Qaphsiel, trying not to let the doubt seep in. “Heaven will appoint a new Watcher, and soon I will be nothing more than a ghost in the shadows of its memory.”

Samael glowed with anger, flames reaching impossible heights as he stepped forward. Qaphsiel took a step back, wings raised defensively, casting another frantic glance down to the portal. Bond was still falling, falling, falling. He could see the young woman’s look of horror and resignation, and it only further fueled his desperation.

“I cannot let you commit this act of treason,” Samael thundered. “Repent for your wrongdoings, and cease this nonsense. I did not report you to the Virtues when you healed the human, but you will not break the covenant.”

“Watch me,” Qaphsiel spat, and braced himself.

There was only one way for an angel to fall to earth.

He tore the wings from his back, felt the delicate bones bend and snap and oh there was pain, so much pain, fiery red-hot pain that made him feel as if he was being split in two. The Host cried out, their melodic voices melting away into ear-jarring panic. Qaphsiel thought he can hear Samael’s rage, rage at his desertion, the one act that any angel is forbidden to commit, but even that quickly faded away as Qaphsiel plummeted towards earth. He was being cut off from the Host. It was disconcerting, the silence where multitudes of voices used to sing. But none of that mattered; the pain and the fear and the overwhelming quiet. Somewhere on Earth, James Bond was sinking. Lungs filling with water. Blood exiting his body steadily. Qaphsiel was the only one who could save him.

He crashed into the river and gasped at the foreign sensation. _Cold_ , his mind supplied. _This was cold._ He didn’t need to breathe, thankfully, but the heavy, clumsy form of his newly-corporeal body was startling. Qaphsiel kicked through the water, trying to accustom himself to the limitations of a physical manifestation. It wasn’t like being an angel at all. Every feeling magnified, intense. Heavy limbs so unwieldy, like operating a blunt tool.

James was lying at the bottom of the river, expression almost peaceful. Absurdly, Qaphsiel wanted to smooth his hands— _his_ hands—over the wrinkles on the man’s forehead. Yet every second he spent indulging would be a second closer to death for James, and Qaphsiel wouldn’t let that happen. Not after—

He couldn’t let himself think of it yet.

He carried James to the surface easily, remnants of grace lending him strength. Now that he was finally close to the man to touch, he felt bashful, almost. Despite his human’s unconscious state. Qaphsiel brushed his fingers across the tops of James’ eyelids, marveling at the soft texture.

So this was skin! Such a soft barrier between owner and environment. Q could press down on it, watch the veins flex with pressure as blood rose to the surface. A little harder and it would yield, easy as the blossom of a morning rose. How could this body have gone through so much? How much more would it face in the years to come?

The grace inside him was weak and flickering, only a fraction of what was available to him at full power. Still, Qaphsiel didn't hesitate to push as much as he needed into James' body, healing torn muscles and replenishing blood cells.

"Odocicle qaa, zorge, zir noco," Qaphsiel chanted, allowing the Enochian syllables to draw out even more of his grace. He finally drew back, stumbling weakly, when the blood flowing out of Bond’s body had stemmed and his shredded skin knit itself back together. The obvious drain worried him. How long could his grace last, now that he was cut off from the Host?

He left James by the side of the river. Natives of the area would be along soon, and would care for James until he was ready to return to England. Qaphsiel had preparations to make for that day.

His back ached. The sun hurt his eyes. There was a spot on his thigh that he couldn’t itch. Qaphsiel had fallen from grace to save a human. But there was purpose in his steps; after all, he had a new mission now. A mission he had been unconsciously preparing for from the first day he laid eyes on that beautiful, seductive soul.

Protect James Bond.

***

Taking over the role of quartermaster hadn’t been difficult. Originally, Qaphsiel had planned on setting himself up as a doctor in Medical—there were some Ancient Sumerian healing techniques he’d been curious to try. Then the MI6 building had blown up, taking with it the life of old Major Boothroyd, and Qaphsiel had seized his opportunity.

His name in heaven had begun with a Q as well. It seemed like fate.

A touch of grace, and he was accepted into the fold of British intelligence. Qaphsiel, newly dubbed Q, wasn’t surprised to find that he excelled in his role. What were human calculations to a being created from unfathomable wavelengths? His superiors raved over his proposals, from palm print-encoded guns to semantics for a GPS-enabled, infusion-safe liquid he planned to use as improved trackers over the outdated embarrassments currently in circulation.

The mundanities of daily life were harder. MI6 issued him a flat that Q barely touched, but it was nice having a space for his own. What wasn’t nice was how _dirty_ being human got. There were always floors to vacuum, shelves to dust, laundry to wash—not to mention the fact that he himself frequently required showers. Not a day went by that Q wasn’t tempted to use the faint remnants of grace he had left just to alleviate some of the griminess.

Dreaming, and the elusive imagery it brought, was disturbing. So much of human nature seemed to come down to a basic lack of control over the self. Only yesterday, he’d had a dream in which he was chased through the halls of MI6 by a massive doughnut. Glazed. Where was the logic, the sense in that? Although, once he had gotten into a fight with a group of Chariots in Heaven, and they’d attempted to run him down—oh, never bloody mind. He was a quartermaster, not a psychologist.

Then, just when he felt he had finally begun to master the subtleties of life on earth, it finally happened. James Bond officially came back to life on a Wednesday. MI6 was shocked. Q, not so much. M handed him the order to equip Bond for a mission a few days later.

Q liked M, though he couldn’t quite forgive her for ordering James shot. The woman was brisk, efficient, and cool. Everything that Q had prided himself on while he was still an angel. Her soul was antiquated silver, elegant as the woman herself. There were mortals that Q was expected to demonstrate subservience to that he saw as no better than simpering bacterium, but he could respect M’s authority.

He read the files on James Bond again while he sat in the park, jittery with anticipation for their first meeting. His glasses fogged up in the London mist again, and he grimaced, sliding them off for the sixth time that day to clean them. The moment he removed them from his face, an explosion of light went off in the air, baring every human soul to Q’s gaze, and he hissed under his breath. He’d made the glasses himself to protect from the constant glow of souls, after contracting a migraine every time he left his flat.

The air rippled beside him. Q spun around, a startled sound lodging in his throat on top of the ham sandwich he’d been enjoying. But there was no one sitting there. Then he felt it; the tingle of ozone and spring water.

“Qaphsiel.”

“That’s not my name anymore.”

_Oh, God save them all. What was it doing here?_

He hadn’t had many dealings with the Metatron, the Voice of God—one of the few who were permitted to look upon His countenance. But he knew its power, said to rival that of an Archangel. Fear spiked through him, increasing amygdalian neural activity and epinephrine release, but he forced himself to stay calm. It was only its voice that could travel between the spheres. Metatron could not harm him here.

“Do not be foolish, Qaphsiel. What is a human title to us? Surely you’ve realised by now that you do not really belong with them. It is not too late to repent and come home.”

Home. Even after a year, Q couldn’t forget the longing he held for heaven. He missed his wings, his grace, the voices of his brothers and sister in his head. To stuff an angel in the body of a human was the worst kind of bondage, and he felt the frustrations of his limitations every day.

But home now was also London. Q enjoyed working in MI6. He liked working with M, and he liked the Chief of Staff, Tanner, and his employees. He was even somewhat fond of his cramped little flat, and the Indian takeaway he ordered three times a week. Mostly, he enjoyed the emotions that came with being human. The complex blend of hormones and chemicals that made life so interesting. Last week he’d cried over a particularly touching commercial involving sad puppies and environmental decay.

Then of course, there was James Bond.

“Why now? I fell nearly a year ago. Why haven’t you contacted me before now?”

The Metatron didn’t sigh, would never stoop to such a base act as sighing, although its voice took on a distinctly cool tone. “Circumstances change. We have decided that you have been punished for your transgression for long enough, and are willing to offer you a second chance.”

Q shook his head, smiling faintly. The bloody nerve. “I don’t want a second chance. I don’t want to be the Watcher. Or, for the sake of maintaining local culture, let me put that in human terms: my resignation's on your desk.”

“And for what? _This_? You would give up eternal glory and honour to roll around in the mud with these filthy creatures?”

“Exactly,” said Q. “I don’t expect you to understand, but I really am quite satisfied here.”

“You will be sorry,” warned the Metatron. To Q’s relief, its voice was already fading. “You have set events into motion, far greater than you could dare to imagine. This is not the last you will hear from us…”

Q exhaled a sharp gust of breath as the presence of the other angel faded, but worry congealed in his stomach. The Metatron did not bluff. Nor did it make empty threats. One day, possibly in the near future, Q knew that they would be back. He would need to be ready when that day came.

That shard of trepidation stayed with him for the rest of the day, even when he sat on a bench next to a surly agent, the moment he had been waiting for for the entirety of his human existence.

“Double-oh seven. I’m your new quartermaster.”


	2. Chapter 1

_Three Years Later_

“James.”

No response. The surreptitious tightening of a well-muscled arm.

“ _James._ ”

Golden eyebrows furrowed in what their owner probably thought to be a subtle gesture. Q sighed.

“James bloody Bond, get off of me _right now_ unless you’re interested in dating a pancake.”

The man had the audacity to laugh. Q glared, ready to deliver the most vicious tongue-lashing of his life when James grasped him by the hips and flipped him over. Q let out a surprised _oomph_ , disoriented when he found himself sprawled on top of his boyfriend’s very toned, very firm torso.

His _boyfriend_. This was a development that even Q, for all his intelligence and super-human perception, could not have foreseen. Granted, prior to Bond, he’d never even considered instigating romantic relations with anyone. Not to mention that for all he had seen of James’ life, not once had he demonstrated sexual interest in any male, save for the ones he was sent to seduce.

So it was quite the shock when James asked him to dinner. Even more when that wasn’t the last time. Fourteen months later, here they were.

Here, with the insufferable man smirking up at him, daring Q to scold. His hair was sleep-tousled and soft. Q brushed it back from Bond's forehead, burying his fingers in the thick strands and marvelling at its texture, each individual strand perceivable to the sensitive pads of his fingers.

“ _Virq a butmon levithmong_ ,” he grumbled in Enochian, unwilling to let James think he'd won, despite the way his body naturally curled into the warm heat.

“Indeed,” James agreed. Q turned his head to glare up at him muzzily, unsure if this was sarcasm. He'd long since mastered the art of verbal irony—and took no small pleasure in employing it in every area of his daily life—but understanding sarcasm was a wholly different skill. "Also, Old Cyrillian?"

Q shook his head, grinning. "Nope. And you'll never get it." Not unless Bond suddenly took an interest in historical Bible studies.

With a peevish sigh, James leaned back, keeping Q wrapped tight against his chest. "Spy, darling. It's my job to tease out information."

Conversation lulled, the two enjoying the rare sensation of simply being with each other, without deadlines and without threats to their lives. The clock on the bedside table read 5 AM, hands illuminated by the dirty glow of London before sunrise. They had some time before they were expected at headquarters. James seemed content to simply lie there, serving as a pillow for Q, but since Q was already awake, he had other plans.

“Are you planning on sleeping all day?” Q teased, brushing his fingers down James’ abdomen, dancing dangerously close to the waistband of his pants. James exhaled sharply.

“Bloody tease.”

“I don’t think it counts as teasing if I have every intent on following through,” Q murmured in response, delighted when James began to neck at his clavicle. The experienced tongue immediately hit a particularly sensitive area and Q moaned, still weak to the pleasures that the body could offer.

Human skin was so _sensitive_. Q wasn’t sure how any of them ever managed to get anything done, not when there was a million different sensations on the body at any given moment. He and James had once spent an entire day in bed, teasing out reactions from each other, hedonistic in a way that was at once baffling and exhilarating.

It was a pretty convincing argument for falling. And one of the many reasons why Q was content with his reckless, spur of the moment decision all those years ago.

“How can you be so energetic?” asked James, still rubbing away the sleep in his eyes. “You came to bed long after I fell asleep.”

 _Fallen angel perks,_ Q wanted to say. Instead, his response was, “One of the first signs of aging. Now get on with it, double-oh seven. Initiative is a key component of your yearly review.” 

“Cheek,” James laughed and kissed him, only stopping to groan when his work mobile rang. A second later, Q’s did as well.

“Speaking of the devil…” murmured James, tonguing against Q’s nape without the slightest hint that he would stop to pick up the phone.

“Mmm,” Q sighed. “What do you think they’ll do to us if we don’t come in?”

“Don’t know, but it can’t be worse than what I have planned for them.”

“Be nice,” Q scolded, biting his cheek to suppress a grin. Bond might’ve been a professional, but the man had more than a passing bit of childish obstinacy that irked allies and terrorists alike. He pulled back regretfully, promising James with his eyes that as soon as whatever MI6 had buggered up was sorted out, they could return to their more... pleasurable activities.

“Q here,” he announced crisply into the speaker. From the corner of his eye, he could see James answer his mobile as well, pacing across the light cast through the windowpane.

The panicked squawking on the other end was impossible to make out. Q sighed in annoyance. “Repeat that please? And a bit slower?”

“It’s double-oh four, sir.”

Q’s heart sank lower and lower as the babbling at the other end of the phone droned on. When he finally hung up, he stared at the receiver before putting it down, hoping it would ring again to apologize for its mistake. To say that it was just a bad joke. Anything to contradict the sobering news delivered by his flustered technician. Q’s mind was already whirring, preparing for a thousand possibilities as he murmured, “I have to go in now...”

“Me too,” said James. The affection in his eyes had flattened, leaving only the trained killer. “Double-oh four, right? I’m being sent to retrieve him.”

 ***

Double-oh four, nee William Chamberlain. Specializing in subterfuge, infiltration, and utter discreetness. In other words, the polar opposite of Bond. He was deployed a fortnight ago to California to assist the CIA on a mission that was supposedly low-risk. In fact, it had almost gone to one of the lower field agents, save for the fact that a number of members in the drug cartel were known for their unusually cruel methods of torture. One night he’d turned off his earpiece just before returning to his hotel. That was the last anyone had heard from him.

“Normally, we’d allow agents a forty-eight hour grace period to get in touch after they go off grid,” said M, looking tired and hassled. Q still remembered the first day they’d met, the man’s battle-scarred soul flickering valiantly despite the darkness shadowing the back of his eyes. Despite Bond’s dislike for the newcomer in MI6, Q respected him immensely. Besides, he suspected that Bond only disliked him so much because they were so similar.

But in the three years since Mallory had taken over, the lines around his eyes had grown markedly pronounced, and his skin had a grey pallor that no amount of time in the Bahamas could mend.

Q had not witnessed any such signs of aging in himself. Youth, he assumed. Though joining the ranks of humanity meant that he would grow old and die one day, just like the rest of them. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Death was so far out of an angel’s area of concern that it still seemed to him a bit surreal, a bit of make-believe for the fledglings.

Unaware of Q’s scrutiny, M continued. “However, double-oh four’s mission was deemed low risk, and his silence was not anticipated, especially since we have no reason to believe that his cover was blown. R’s tapped his phone, and there are a number of cartel members demanding his attention, waiting to exchange contracts with him.”

“Basically, he’s either deserted or there’s a third party at play here,” concluded Bond, radiating icy anger.

Q winced. Double-ohs weren’t exactly friendly with each other, but they had an unspoken pact of loyalty formed by duty in the name of Queen and Country. James would not take it well if Bill had in fact, turned traitor. “Much more likely that he’s been compromised,” he pointed out. “If he’s turned, it’s much more likely that he would fake his death, rather than simply going off-radar and knowing that we would send others out to track him down. He’s hardly the best fighter we’ve got.” In fact, double-oh four was infamous among the Service for being one of the few double-ohs who still avoided killing as much as he could.

James nodded slowly, a bit of fight leaving his shoulders.

“Whatever the case, we need a quick retrieval on him,” sighed M. “Q, you’ll be monitoring double-oh seven, of course. I want eyes and ears on him at all times.”

The agent and quartermaster both nodded, and stood up. “We’ll get him back,” assured Q, directing the statement to both of his companions. “Now if you’ll follow me, Bond, I’ve got your kit all ready to go.”

“So much for a morning quickie,” Bond grumbled as soon as the door to M’s office had closed behind them.

“I heard that!” Mallory barked. Q and Bond snorted simultaneously. Though neither could summon the appropriate mirth, given the situation at hand.

“Any thoughts on who took him?” Q asked instead. “Assuming we’re operating on the belief that he was compromised, that is.”

“Who knows?” Bond sighed. “Mafia, local law enforcement, rival Intelligence agency… We’re going in blind here. I don’t like it.”

“Me neither,” said Q. “But I’ll keep you safe.”

Those were more than just platitudes. Q could still feel his last reserves of grace thrumming inside of him. Depleted, but enough to level cities if anyone should cross him. No force on earth could take James away from him, not if Q had anything to say about it.

At the entrance to Q-branch, Q paused, surveying his domain with pride. The bunker they’d relocated to after the attack on Vauxhall was passable, but this new headquarters gave him all the space and supplies he needed to rebuild Research & Development according to his own vision. To his delight, one of his predecessors had left a slot-machine cheater, and once every few months, he'd send a squad of employees to the nearest casino. Thus they’d ended up with a budget—albeit illicit—far outside of anything MI6 would have provided. He’d erected soundproof glass pods throughout the room, encouraging an atmosphere for collaboration. The open floor plan made it easier for him to keep an eye on everyone, and sometimes he would sit in his office in the centre, taking pleasure in the efficiency of his department. The second level was lined with state of the art computers and oversized monitors, vital for keeping track of a wayward agent. He had done a complete overhaul of the security system as well. The result was rather spectacular, if he did say so himself.

A boyfriend, a flat of his own, a job he excelled at. Not bad for someone who technically was only four years old.

“Right then. Let’s get you set up.” Q pulled open one of the metal workbenches that lined the room, revealing a hodgepodge of neatly stacked equipment. Bond's eyes fairly gleamed, which Q chose to ignore. “Flesh coloured earpiece. Sticks to your upper pinna. Practically impossible for someone to see, unless they’re peering into your ear.”

“Thank you,” said Bond, accepting it graciously. Too graciously. Q narrowed his eyes, slapping his hands away from the flash grenade prototype that the man had somehow lifted while Q was occupied.

“Pay attention!” he hissed.

James chuckled, eyes twinkling dangerously. “Just examining the wares. Surely you don’t intend to send me out with just a gun and radio again?”

“Of course not,” Q sniffed. “But you’re touching a prototype grenade filled with highly unstable elements. I will be very put out if you blow up my branch.”

James sighed playfully. “And here I thought there were perks to dating the Quartermaster.”

“Oh, there are,” Q agreed, the ghost of a grin dancing on his lips. Bond never failed to bring out his mischievous nature, a side of himself he was only just coming into. There wasn't much room for mirth when you were the Watcher of the Universe, but with Bond, it was surprisingly easy to be silly. “Perks include twice your daily recommended dosage of sarcasm and some very good shags, if I may say so myself.”

“You may,” James agreed. To reward him for his compliance, Q handed him a laser watch. He took James’ usual Omega in return, promising to keep it safe until the man returned. There was of course, also the usual Walther, which James accepted with a smile, watching the green lights flicker on in his grasp before tucking the gun into the lining of his jacket.

And suddenly, that was it. Q glanced around. They were standing in the middle of Q-branch, and though everyone was absorbed in their work, Q didn’t want to risk accusations of unprofessionalism. More human customs. In Q’s opinion, workplace displays of affection could only elevate serotonin levels and ensure better motivated employees, but not everyone seemed to see things his way.

“Good luck out there in the field,” said Q, as he did to all his agents. The touch on the wrist, casual yet intimate, he reserved only for double-oh seven.

James nodded, casting a furtive gaze around the room, and Q’s pulse quickened. Quick as a flash, he leaned in, ghosting the barest hint of a kiss across Q’s parted lips. “After I get home, we’ll continue where we left off,” he promised, the honeyed tone at odds with his professional mask.

Q sighed, already longing for the other man’s presence. “Then you’d better hurry back.”


	3. Chapter 2

The day after Bond was deployed to California, the sun suffocated itself behind a cover of ominous grey clouds that matched Q’s temper. Then halfway to the tube station, rain began to pour in a torrential downpour, soaking Q’s jumper. He jogged the rest of the way, grumbling Enochian curses under his breath.

Of course the tube was packed. _Of course_ it was. Being smacked in the face with a wet umbrella by a distracted woman on her cellphone certainly did nothing to improve his mood. His fingers twitched with the urge to smite, an urge that only intensified when the conductor announced a fifteen minute delay.

Sometimes he _loathed_ London.

Q did not pine. He had survived millennia without James Bond, and a few days, maybe weeks, wouldn’t make much of a difference. After the agent had left, Q spent the rest of the day immersed in his projects. There were weapons to calibrate, team meetings to oversee, and the occasional agent in need of assistance. He even accepted his co-workers’ invitation to the pub, despite his own inability to get drunk. It was better than moping around at home.

One thing that Q had never got used to was silence. The void inside of him where the comforting presence of his brothers and sisters used to be never really grew smaller, even when he was with friends. Idle chatter soothed the loneliness. Music blasted through headphones would work in a pinch, but mostly he preferred the ebb and flow of conversation, letting it wash over him like tidal waves.

It was better when Bond was there. The man had essentially moved in after a few months with Q as his quartermaster, dropping in at every hour of the day as if he owned the place. Q would hardly have protested; at first because it made it easier to keep an eye on the man, then because he genuinely enjoyed James’ presence. He was observant, seeming to realise that Q hated silence, and would make as much noise as possible when he was home, heaving himself onto sofas and letting cutlery clatter in bowls in a manner so at odds with his training that Q couldn’t help but feel touched.

Oh, sod it. He _did_ miss Bond.

The Q-branch techies were clever enough to stay out of their boss’s way when he arrived, half an hour late for work, clothes soaked and a murderous expression on his face that would make even a double-oh think twice about provoking him. Q stalked straight to the monitor displaying double-oh seven’s status. Judging from his tracker, he had already arrived in California. Q pulled the feeds from security cameras in downtown Los Angeles, scanning for Bond’s hotel.

“Q, is that you?” Bond’s voice rose from a haze of static, making him jump in his seat.

“Just got here. How’s LA?” Q adjusted the radio frequency until the migraine-inducing static had disappeared, leaving only the smooth voice of his favourite agent.

Bond hummed. “Hot. Humid. A nice change from London, but I do wish I’d packed lighter clothes. Oh, and I thought you'd like to know that an old silo outside of town seems to have been sliced in half. Not sure what could have done that."

"Are you—" Q cut himself off with a growl. "Double-oh seven, tell me you didn't use my laser watch for non-mission sanctioned purposes?"

He could practically hear the glee in the man's voice as he replied, "I could tell you that, if you'd like."

"And would it be true?" He was going to strangle him. Except then there'd be no one left to give him cuddles on late nights and listen to him rant about his work. Drat.

Bond hummed noncommittally. "Maybe."

Oh, sod it all to hell. At least they knew the watch worked. Q would just have to send the American minister of foreign affairs an extra large fruit basket when Bond was done. "Hang on, I found you," Q said instead, refusing to let James wind him up any longer.

Bond was dressed in an understated navy suit that allowed him to blend in seamlessly among the bleary-eyed businessmen and drowsy uni students. At Q’s words, he looked around casually, making it seem like nothing more than a cursory glance at the sky, before spotting the security camera from a nearby bank directed towards him. Bond gave it a cheeky salute, and Q’s heart did palpitations.

“Where are you off to now?” he asked as a distraction from the embarrassingly revealing physiological reactions.

“Chamberlain’s hotel was near the intersection of Sunset and Hyperion. I’m going to have a look in his room, interview some of the cleaners.”

“So long as you stick to interviewing and not seducing, I suppose there shan’t be an issue,” said Q, primly.

Bond huffed, one corner of his mouth twitching upwards. “Not even for Queen and country,” he assured. “You’re the only one I bed these days.”

And. Sure, James was a spoiled arse when it came to his tech. But when he said things like that, Q couldn’t helping melting, just a little bit. “In that case, off you go. I’ve got a bit of investigating to do on my end as well, but I’ll try to keep an eye on you.”

"Of course, my quartermaster."

***

Aside from Bond’s mission, Q had other tasks to accomplish. He signed off on a submarine gun prototype that was ready to enter the final stages of testing, reserved the gun range for tomorrow afternoon—even desk jockies had to stay sharp—and compiled files on suspects rumoured to be key players of a smuggling ring, for double-oh eight’s upcoming mission. It was easier to concentrate, now that he had a steady stream of noise from the earpiece to keep his mind at ease. Between assignments, he re-read the reports from double-oh four’s jeopardized mission.

There really wasn’t much to go on. Everything was standard, predictable, until it wasn’t. It worried Q. He who had been able to see across continents with a tilt of the head did not enjoy the feeling of being left in the dark.

He sighed, letting the file fall to the desk. Instead of picking up one of the multitudes of other tasks he had to complete, his mind wandered to James.

It’d been more than a year since they began dating. A few days ago, James had surprised him with a home-cooked midnight picnic on the roof of their building. The pasta was a bit soggy and the ice cream melting, but Q had been touched by the extent of his thoughtfulness. He knew Bond as a man of reserve (in all areas except mission casualties), and the surprise had been thoroughly unexpected. Q grinned to himself now, thinking of the way they kissed gooey chocolate off of each other’s lips, and how, drunk on wine, they’d made love in full view of all the stars.

Some unnamed, heady feeling rushed through his veins at the memory. The feeling had been coming more and more often these days, like warm affection, but tinged with a hint of soul-wrenching desperation. Q had no name for it. Not yet, at least. The closest he could get to the feeling was pressing down on a blue-black bruise and letting the dull ache spread throughout his body. But even that didn’t translate quite right.

The feeling was always there. It grew stronger at some moments, like now, as he watched the gentle pulse of James’ tracker on the computer monitor.

He sighed. Maybe when James got back he could ask him about it. Although, perhaps James would just give him the weird look he did when Q asked why “a piece of cake” was used to diminish the difficulty of a task. Cakes were rather difficult to bake, after all.

***

“What the _hell_ do you mean, Bond’s disappeared too?”

Q was out of his mind with fury, yelling at the terrified kid who had promised to watch Bond while Q went to check up on the weapons testing down in the basement. He couldn’t have been gone for more than two hours, but somehow, in that time, they’d managed to lose track of Bond.

“I don’t...I don’t know what happened,” stuttered the boy, eyes wide with trepidation in the face of Q’s rage. “I was watching the monitors, honest! And I was listening in on him too. He was just walking down the alleyway. Then he hit a blind spot between cameras, it only lasted for like, two seconds, but then his earpiece went silent and he was gone from all the cameras.”

“Impossible,” Q hissed, shoving the boy aside. “Find me the footage. I want to see this for myself.”

The boy scampered off. As soon as he was gone, Q slumped into his chair, taking deep breaths. It wasn’t the first time James had gone dark. Not the first time he’d been kidnapped, or tortured either. But nothing like this had ever happened before. Not when they had so little information to go on, when even he wasn’t sure what they were fighting.

Fear welled up inside him, a spine-tingling wave of uncertainty that he could only just manage to hold back. Surely he couldn’t have lost Bond, not after giving up everything to save him?

No. Fuck that. He would find him, and the other agent too, and he would make the culprit _pay_ for what they’ve done.

Q had seen the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades. He knew a thing or two about torture.

“Sir,” the boy squeaked, rushing back to his side with a flash drive clasped in his clammy hands. Q nodded at him, dismissing him with a strained smile. The video loaded immediately, filling the screen with staticky, black and white security footage. Q squinted, focusing every drop of concentration on the video.

Sure enough, there was Bond, strolling through the alleyway with the faintest tension in his muscles that belied his care. The security footage showed a blurry side profile, taken from some ways up so that only his face and shoulders were visible to the camera. A lump entered Q’s throat. He wondered if this was the last image he would ever have of James.

Bond walked across the screen, exiting the camera’s view. Sure enough, he did not show up on the next camera. Q did some rapid calculations; there was a blind spot of only a metre between the cameras. That must’ve been where Bond was taken. But surely, if he had seen someone standing there, he would’ve betrayed some sign of awareness in his eyes?

Perhaps he did. Q zoomed in, sharpened the images. Replayed the clip again.

James moved in slow-motion, the rise and fall of his chest exaggerated in the blurry video. Q leaned in further, nose almost pressed up to the screen, and stared at his face. It was relaxed, eyes calm, though they darted around constantly, never letting his guard down.

Then, all of a sudden, they snapped forward in a movement incongruous with the slow sweep of a second before. The muscles relaxed in surprise. His head was nearly out of the frame, and the quality of the video was shite, but Q saw what he was looking for. Two fingers raised to James' forehead, touching it for the briefest of moments. The movement was barely visible to the untrained eye, appearing as nothing more than an off-tone blur. But sure enough, James vanished as soon as it touched him.

Q fell backwards into his chair, trembling all over. He felt hot bile rising in his throat.

"Shit. Shit." He whispered to himself.

The whole thing had lasted mere seconds. James' disappearance could easily be attributed to the poorly shot footage. A skip in the video. But Q knew better.

Angels. It had to be.

His mind immediately returned to that day in the park. The day he officially met double-oh seven as the quartermaster. The day that the Metatron had come to him. Was this what it had been referring to? Had they taken James as some sort of revenge, punishment for abandoning his station in heaven?

But then, why wait four years? James had gone on countless missions since his acquaintance with Q, and even after their relationship had begun, there had only been radio silence. Not to mention, there were very few angels that were permitted to enter the human realm at all. It was, after all, the reason behind his exile.

None of this made any sense. But one thing Q knew for sure: he was the only one who had even a chance of rescuing Bond and Chamberlain.

He groaned, burying his face in his hands. This could not be happening.

“Q?”

His head shot up, and he nearly groaned again when he saw who it was. Mallory and Bill Tanner, the Chief-of-Staff, had come in. Mallory wore such a pinched expression on his face that he looked constipated, and as they approached, both men eyed Q like one would a ticking bomb.

“We heard about double-oh seven,” said Tanner. “Have you found anything new?”

Q shook his head. Telling them that angels were real, and had likely kidnapped Bond was out of the question, unless he wanted to earn himself a permanent trip down to psych. And he didn’t have enough grace left to justify wasting it performing minor miracles to convince the two men. No, Q was on his own for this rescue mission, which meant he had to lie.

“No, nothing,” he replied, not having to fake the worried scrunch of his brow. “We’re considering the possibility that they sabotaged the cameras beforehand, but at this stage anything is possible, really. I’ll keep looking.”

"This is a bloody farce," growled Mallory. "Agents vanishing in broad daylight. Gods, sometimes I wish I was back in the SAS. Just point and shoot. None of this cloak and dagger _spy_ business.” He spit out the word ‘spy’ in the same manner he would use to curse out Bond when the man would saunter into his office after having blown up half the city.

“Double-oh seven and four are some of our best agents,” said Tanner, ever-soothing. Q was glad that he had used the present tense in place of the more ominous past tense. Meaning he hadn’t written off the two yet. “Frankly, short of sending out a full-fledged team, I’m not sure what else we can do. Any group that can take out those two so easily is one that we need to be on full-alert about.”

Alright, not so soothing after all.

“Don’t send a team,” said Q, absent-minded as he fiddled with the video clip on the monitors, zooming in on random parts, as if seeking some flash of inspiration. There was an awkward silence, and he realised what he had said. “I mean, not yet. Give me some time to figure out what we’re up against first.”

“You have two days,” Mallory sighed, rubbing his eyes wearily. “The PM’s pissed. Two senior agents gone missing. He’s already looking for excuses to cut our budget, the wanker.”

Two days was just enough time to get to Los Angeles and hopefully, make contact with the angels. If Mallory was already stressed, he would have a coronary when he realised that his quartermaster had disappeared as well. Q almost felt bad for leaving his boss in the dark. Almost.

Mallory turned to leave, but Tanner stopped to put a hand on Q’s shoulder. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help,” he said quietly.

“Thank you,” he said, letting his gratitude show in his smile. Tanner was a good friend. One of the first to welcome him fully to MI6 and to show him the subtle dynamics between branches, how Finance was much more accommodating with budget requests if he did not mention the obsolete nature of paper reports, or how Medical and Psych united in their loathing of the double-oh division. The guidance had been much needed for a freshly fallen angel, new to the world of espionage whilst barely able to make a trip to Tesco by himself.

Tanner nodded in tacit acknowledgement, shutting the heavy doors behind him as he left. Q lifted his glasses slightly, watching a few lilac strands of Tanner’s soul trailing behind him. The man had a surprisingly sensitive soul, considering the organization he worked for. Q worried it would break him. Sentimentality was a dangerous risk in their line of work. After all, just look at how Bond's disappearance has compromised him.

As soon as he heard the doors hiss close, Q sprang into action. First, he put a fresh layer of encryptions on the MI6 servers. He refused to allow the systems to be compromised while he was away. Q'd spent the better part of a month rebuilding all the servers from the ground up after Silva's attack, and since then, they hadn't failed once. He would be damned if this rescue mission ruined his spotless record.

For weapons, he took a large hunting knife and an old Browning BDA that he was sure no one would miss. Their quality didn’t matter; they were all but useless against angels in their present state anyway. But the knife could be doused in holy fire, and the pistol was the perfect size for the anti-angel bullets he had carved himself, sitting in a shoebox at the back of his closet.

Okay, so he had been a little paranoid after the Metatron’s visit. Turned out that the paranoia was well-earned.

His branch was as well-staffed as it was during the day—there was no such thing as a graveyard shift when hindrances like time zones stood in the way. But Q didn't need to sneak away. Perks of being a branch-head: none of your employees would dare to question your actions if you look determined enough.

Exhaling noisily, he stood up, clutching the knife with a death grip in his sweaty palms. As he'd predicted, no one spared him a second glance when he stepped out.

Time to go hunting.


	4. Chapter 3

Q hated planes. He really, really fucking hated planes. Sure, he had marveled at the humans’ ingenuity from his nice, safe perch up in heaven. And sure, once or twice, he’d even wondered what it would be like to travel in one of those machines. But it turned out that, much like microwavable meals and forest fires, they were things to be admired from afar.  
  
The vulnerability to changes in air pressure. The stale, recycled air that made his lungs constrict. The idea that his fragile existence relied on the engineering of imperfect beings, subject to human failure. So many uncertainties. He remembered each plane crash he had born witness to, the pungent sweat of fear and flashing cabin lights and mess of debris that would never be completely retrieved, and had to count digits of pi to subvert the rising hysteria.  
  
“Fuck. Fuck fuck buggering shitty fuck,” he muttered under his breath as another wave of turbulence hit. The woman next to him gave him a scandalized glare and purposefully turned away to face the window. Q made a mental note to aim for her if the nausea rose again.  
  
He missed being able to fly. Really fly. Not the pale imitation of it that airplanes offered, but real flying, like riding on the back of a comet, like having every fibre of your being reduced to a single point and flung across time and space. He missed it with a fierce longing that rivaled his affection for James. Well—alright, that wasn’t true. Maybe more along the lines of his appreciation for C# .NET, or a strong cup of tea in the morning. Warm jumpers on snowy evenings? Hmm, maybe. The inane prattle in his head settled him, let him concentrate on anything but his terrifying hurdle through the air.  
  
By the time the plane finally landed—and Christ, Q didn’t think he’d prayed that hard since the days of the first apocalypse—he was already in a foul mood. A mood that was only exacerbated by the waves of sweltering heat that assaulted his senses, and the migraine-inducing sun. Flesh vessels and their ridiculous sensitivity to temperature and humidity changes. He took off his wool jumper regretfully, already missing the London rain.  
  
He checked his phone. Five missed calls. Ah, so they’d noticed his absence sooner than he’d expected. No matter. They could hardly drag him back like a wayward child. He switched the mobile off and chucked it in the bin, feeling a pang of loss for the collection of cat videos he’d stashed on there.  _No sentimentality,_ he reminded himself. Not with so much on the line. Videos could be rewatched, contact lists reconsolidated. Bond and Chamberlain's lives would not be so easily reclaimed.  
  
_Alright, Q. Time to prove your worth._ If he were Chamberlain, he’d make contact with their American compatriots, find out everything they knew before collaborating on a stakeout mission. If he were Bond, well. Who knew. Someone would probably already be shooting at him.  
  
No, outside help wasn’t an option. Without the might of Q-branch behind him, without any resources except an old knife and a loaded gun, there was only one lead for Q to follow.  
  
By the time he found his way to the alley where Bond was seen last, it was late afternoon. The alley was just as undisturbed as it had appeared in the video; dark and filthy, the ground lined with all manners of debris that didn’t bear close examination. The only thing that the video hadn’t prepared him for was the nauseating stench of rotten vegetables and spoiled milk. He kicked at a trash can experimentally, flinching back when a rat ran across his shoe. Ugh.

He smashed the video cameras that MI6 were no doubt still monitoring. There could be no witnesses to his family reunion.

A slight glimmer caught his attention. His stomach rolled when he recognized his laser watch, face smashed and glittering like diamonds in the sludge. A calmer, rational part of himself grumbled at James' inability to return his equipment in one piece, even as the rest of his mind shrieked, imagining all the things they could be doing to James at that very moment. One thing was for sure: he didn't have any time to waste.  
  
The moment had arrived. He stood in the same spot that Bond did when he disappeared. One hand gripped the butt of the pistol holstered under his shirt, faint tremors of tension running up his arm. “Well, here I am!” he called loudly, glaring upwards at the dying sun. “Brothers. Sisters. I’m here, so return what is mine.”  
  
He waited. Five seconds stretching into ten, stretching into a minute.  
  
“Get your feathery arses down here,” he growled. But when he spun about, he found himself still alone in the alley. Dread crept into his mind. Did he get it wrong? Maybe the angels weren’t involved after all, and he had just put his career in jeopardy on the basis of a whim.  
  
“ _Rah ah gah ee oh es_ ,” he cried out desperately, as a last resort. The Enochian spell sent his grace alight with reckless power. It burned inside him, twisting in agony as it reached out to the Host, seeking out the angel in closest proximity to him.

And all of a sudden, it connected.

“Brother.”  
  
Q gaped, the hand on his pistol falling away in shock. The man standing behind him was tall and dark, standing rigidly in a pose Q recognized from his first days on earth. He was dressed in the casual clothes of a Californian native; a neon t-shirt and a pair of shorts that hung precariously on his waist. Q had never seen the man before in his life, but he would recognize the precise shade of the grace burning away at the vessel anywhere.  
  
“...Samael?” he asked, tentative.  
  
The man—Samael—grinned, showing two rows of perfect white teeth in a shark-like manner. “Hello, Qaphsiel. It has been a while since we last spoke.”  
  
“But...you don’t have jurisdiction on Earth,” said Q, frowning. A rustling behind him sent his senses on full alert, and he spun around rapidly, pulling out the hunting knife sheathed next to his thigh and swiping at his assailant.  
  
The girl leapt back, eyes glittering with cold amusement. “Qaphsiel,” she greeted with icy calm, letting her own set of knives fall to her side with careless grace, as if she hadn’t just tried to stab him mere seconds earlier.  
  
Her skin tone was the same rich ebony as the vessel that Samael had taken, and the similar shapes of their eyes and mouths led Q to believe that the two were siblings. Still, her vessel only came up to Q’s waist. Six or seven years, at most. The youthful body taut with predatory anticipation. Ah, Q recognized this one as well.  
  
“Adriel,” he nodded, heart pounding, fight or flight instinct screaming at him to shoot to smite to defend—

_Calm down,_ he scolded himself. _Not until they tell you where Bond is._  
  
She tilted her head to one side, the boneless loll of her neck unnatural. Pale ale eyes seemed to penetrate into Q’s insides, more effective than any weapon she yielded. “So the rumours were true,” she murmured, half to herself. “Your grace is practically gone. You’re running on fumes.”  
  
“I get by,” Q deflected. “Why did you take my agents?”  
  
“We needed to talk to you.” That was Samael, face giving away nothing. “Come with us, and we will take you to your humans.”  
  
Q flinched back, backing up against the wall. He didn’t trust either of these two. An angel of vengeance and an angel of destruction were not his first choice of “angels Q would like to meet in an abandoned alley”.  
  
Adriel tsked, her sweet, childish face pinched up in annoyance far beyond its age. “Do not try to argue, Qaphsiel. You know that the only way you will get your humans back is if you follow us. Did you expect us to simply hand them over?”  
  
No, he hadn’t. But that didn’t mean he was ready to let those two transport him to God-only-knew-where. “How do I know this isn’t sort of a trick?” he asked. “That you won’t just stab me in mid-flight and dump my body in the ocean?”  
  
Samael growled. “If we wanted to kill you, we would not have led you to the other side of the Atlantic. These flesh vessels are not durable, and with the pittance of grace you have left, you would bleed out before you even knew what happened.”  
  
Q swallowed. “Fair enough. Let’s go.”

***

  
Q stumbled as they landed. Oh _Iabes_ , that was true flight. Quantum tunnelling through three dimensional space, the cells of his body reconfiguring themselves in an intricate dance that left him breathless. It felt a pity, really, that he had spent the trip bracing for a knife in his gut.

Taking a closer look at his surroundings, he could have laughed out loud. In true comic book villain style, Samael and Adriel had brought him to an abandoned warehouse. The space was gutted of everything except a few crates. The roof was falling in, watery light pooling in ripples on the floor. The lack of sound insulation worried him; it meant that no one was near enough to hear him scream.

A wet, dripping sound in the background made him stiffen. Hollow carcasses like this warehouse shouldn't be equipped with plumbing, and it wasn't exactly pouring down rain outside. He stared into the darkness, squinting, trying to make out the source of the dripping. The silence from the two angels at his back swelled the atmosphere with tension.

"What the bloody hell..." he paused at the large, bulky shape tucked away into a corner. It was strung up, attached to great big meat hooks swinging from the ceiling. The closer he got to it, the more that the scent of rot permeated his nose, a sweetly sickening scent that made the alley smell like wildflowers in comparison. The hair on the back of his neck crawled.

There was something glistening on the ground in front of the figure. A heap of something splattered on the ground in a curiously familiar winding shape. Almost like a gardening hose...

"Holy—” he gasped, stumbling backwards in a panic, keeping one hand on his mouth. Fuck. Oh fuck. How could they—why would they— Oh no, no no no no no…

"You eviscerated him?" he shrieked, unable to move from the spot. His eyes had adjusted well enough by now to see the familiar shape of double-oh four, strung up by his arms on two hooks. _Like a slab of meat,_ he thought, gagging. His stomach was torn open, wound surgically neat, with the long string of intestines piled in a foul-smelling heap in front of him. Judging by the smell, he had been dead for less than a day.

He couldn't even mourn for the dead agent, not with those two flanking him, ready to do the same to him at any given moment. "Where's double-oh seven?" he demanded. If they had done this to Chamberlain, there was no telling what horrors they might have visited on Bond.

"Your precious human is alive," said Adriel, disinterested. It infuriated Q to see how calm she was, peering at the dead body without as much as a hint of remorse. He snarled, drawing his gun and pointing it at her. Rage thrummed through his head. He wanted her to suffer. He wanted her to be in as much agony as his agent must've been when she slaughtered him.

"Take me to him, _now._ I won't hesitate to shoot." He cocked the hammer of the gun in emphasis.

Samael, thankfully, was much more pragmatic than his counterpart. "Sheath your weapon, brother. He is unharmed. We merely took him as a precaution, to ensure your cooperation once you've seen what we're willing to do."  
  
"I always knew that you were willing to commit cold-blooded murder," snarled Q. “Not exactly an original display.”  
  
Adriel laughed, the cold, derisive sound echoing off the walls, until it seemed like her harrowing amusement was everywhere at once. "You must be joking, Qaphsiel. Murder? This is hardly murder." She flicked one hand in the direction of the corpse. "Call it…pest control.”  
  
Q took a deep breath, ignoring the putrid scent of his former coworker’s body. Rage burned inside him, hot and heavy. "If James is alive, I want to see him," he demanded again, choosing to ignore her words. Arguing would only anger them; his goal was to bring him and James out of this, alive. Not to educate.

Samael and Adriel exchanged a glance, shrugging. "Fine," the man said, waving a hand. Immediately, James appeared on the ground in front of them. He seemed relatively unharmed, to Q's relief, save for a dark bruise on his temple. His hands were secured with only a set of chains. Evidentially, the angels did not view him as a threat.  
  
"Q?" James murmured, dazed at the sudden change of scenary. "Q! What are you doing here? You need to leave, now—” he broke off when he saw the angels, eyes narrowing.  
  
Q rushed forward, and the angels did not stop him. "You're okay?" he demanded, the stress of the past forty-eight hours alleviating slightly now that he knew James was alive and seemingly well. He ran his hands over James' face, re-memorizing the sharp angles, skimming over the bruise with a light touch.  
  
James didn't relax into his touch. His sharp gaze stayed on their captors. "I don't know what they want," he ghosted into Q's ears in the faintest of whispers, leaning sideways so that his lips were hidden by Q's hair. Not that it would help, with their superior auditory abilities. "They killed double-oh four. They're dangerous, Q. More dangerous than anyone I’ve ever met."  
  
Before Q could begin to explain, Adriel cut in, impatiently. "Well, this is all very sweet and touching," she drawled. "But the clock is ticking, Qaphsiel. Now that you've ascertained your precious human is safe, we can get down to business."  
  
"Qaphsiel?" asked James, but Q didn't answer. Inside, his mind was reeling. This was not how he wanted James to find out about who—about _what_ he was, but apparently, he would not get a choice in the matter.  
  
"Then explain," he said, trying to fake courage he didn't have. He tightened his grip around the gun. "Tell me why you're down here. Tell me why you've taken James, and killed Chamberlain. Explain _everything_."  
  
"You want _us_ to explain?" laughed Samael, suddenly every bit as hateful as Adriel. His grace swirled dangerously, like a hurricane inside him, and for a minute it seemed as if it would burst free from its vessel. "Why don't you start, Qaphsiel. Tell us why you have decided to wage war on heaven."  
  
What?

What was he talking about? Q risked a brief glance at James, who seemed as confused as he was about the whole business. when had he done anything of the sort? "I didn't wage war," he protested. "I've been minding my own business here, on earth, this whole time. I haven't had anything to do with heaven since I fell."  
  
"Yes, you _fell_!" cried Adriel. "Do you have any idea what you did by falling? The repercussions of your actions? You've instigated civil war in heaven! There are angels killing each other, tearing the heavens apart with their actions, because of what you’ve done. And for what?" she looked at James like he was no better than a cockroach. " _This_?"  
  
“Hang on, hang on.” There were too many accusations and not enough explanations. "You _have_ to be mistaken. I was the _Watcher,_ not some bloody angel of peace and goodwill. If my absence is such an inconvenience, maybe you should take it up with the current Watcher.”

Samael chuckled, the sound dark and low. “Yes, that would be convenient, wouldn’t it? But alas, if we only _had_ another Watcher.”

Q furrowed his brows. They had not replaced him? But… “You’re lying. That’s impossible.” The Universe could not survive without a witness, without someone to catalogue each passing event. Without proof that each moment had truly come to pass, how could one be certain that they had existed? Space would collapse in on itself. The borders between the real and unreal would begin to blur. His head hurt. No, no, how could it be true?

This had to be a lie. But he knew, from the solemn faces of his former brethren, that it was not.

“Q, I would really appreciate some clue as to what’s going on here,” said James.  
  
“Hold your tongue, meat sack,” said Adriel, moving forward menacingly. Without hesitation, Q fired at her outstretched hand. He wasn’t a practiced shot, and the recoil stung his palms, but the bullet still managed to graze the top of her forearm. She cried out, the sound shrill and piercing, loud enough to make the ground tremble and for James and Q to grimace, covering their ears.  
  
“What is that,” demanded Samael, eyeing Q’s gun with wariness for the first time.  
  
Q smiled without humour, heart pounding with adrenaline now that first blood had been drawn. “Enochian-etched bullets. Did I mention that I design weapons for a living?”  
  
Adriel stalked forward, flesh sizzling where it had been kissed by the bullet, but Samael held her back. “Crude methods, Adriel. We talked about this.” To Q’s horror, he nodded towards James.  
  
A cruel smile spread across Adriel’s face, the harsh twist grotesque on chubby, childish cheeks. Without warning, she spread her right hand towards James and squeezed.  
  
“No!” shouted Q, reaching towards him, but it was too late. James gasped, face distorting with pain as he collapsed, writhing on the floor. He didn’t scream; stubborn and stoic to the last, though his eyes bulged with pain. With a final jerk, James sprawled limply, panting hard and curling up as if attempting to shield his insides.  
  
“The pain is superficial,” said Samael impassively. “His body will remain unharmed, but that could easily change if you pull another trick. How does organ liquidation sound?”  
  
Q shook his head, vibrating with rage.  
  
“Good,” Samael purred. “Slide the gun over, slowly. No tricks, or the human gets it.” His gaze dropped to the knife still sheathed at Q’s thigh. “Hand the knife over as well. I am sure you have imbued it with the same powers as the gun.  
  
Cursing inwardly, Q did as he was told. The loss of his weapons hit him with a crushing wave of vulnerability, and for the first time since he charged into this whole mess, he realized just how slim their chances of escape were.  
  
“What exactly do you want from us?” he asked, hoping the tremble in his voice had gone unheard. Judging from Adriel’s smug grin, it had not.

“Return with us to heaven. Both of you. We have need for the human too.”

Q shook his head, flinching when Adriel made an aborted motion towards him. “No, not James. You can’t—”

“We will do what we must,” snapped Samael.  
  
“I’ve heard enough,” said James, calmly, standing up and shaking out one bloody cufflink in that cocky way Q recognized from past missions. While the angels had been speaking, he had slipped the chains, and his expression was inscrutable as Q stared at him, mouth agape. Samael and Adriel looked surprised too, as if they’d forgotten that he was there.  
  
James nodded at Q. “Come on, quartermaster. I think it’s time for us to go home, don’t you?”


	5. Chapter 4

Throughout the years Q had known him, Bond had done some truly, spectacularly idiotic things. Marching, guns blazing, into the middle of an international smuggling ring with a broken arm and concussion, for one. Diving out of a crashing helicopter and into the middle of the Pacific. Yet even in comparison to all his past exploits, facing off against two beings of immeasurable power had to be somewhere on the top ten list.

“Bond…” he murmured in warning.

Like the headstrong idiot he was, Bond paid him no attention. “This is all starting to sound dangerously like a domestic,” he said, flashing his best insincere smile. “And I for one, don't care much for these petty dramas. We'll be taking our leave now.”

“Leave?” asked Adriel, with a tinkling little laugh. “How do you propose to do that?”

Bond turned to Q. “Quartermaster?”

“Yes?” asked Q, dreading the manic gleam in Bond’s eyes.

“Shock and awe,” said Bond with a hard smile, the lines around his mouth tense with concentration. That was all the warning Q got before Bond drew his gun and began to empty the clip into the angels, firing again and again as he ran towards the pair.

Clearly, the angels had not expected their prey to fight back, with what, quite honestly, was the stupidest move they could have made, because they froze. The mundane bullets would not hurt them, of course. But the brief second of hesitation provided enough of a distraction for Q to dive for the gun that Adriel had tossed into a corner.

Shock and awe. Paralyzing the enemy with overwhelming displays of power in order to achieve the temporal advantage. It was Bond’s favourite—and most destructive—tactic. One that took large chunks out of the MI6 budget whenever Bond was sent on a mission. Still, Q had never been as grateful for his blunt force approach as he was now, tucking his body into a neat ball as he rolled with the gun, coming up to a crouch and pointing the muzzle at Adriel.

Samael snarled hatefully, the first to recover. With a flick of his hand, he flung Bond across the room. Q winced as he hit the wall with a hard thump, but Adriel was turning her attention to him, and without hesitation, Q fired at her three times, sending a silent prayer that his shots would fly straight. But his wrists trembled with adrenaline, and the first bullet whizzed past her head. Q cursed, tightening his grip and relaxing his shoulders, pretending he was on the practice range again and the other angel was just another paper target. The second clipped her in the shoulder, and the third lodged perfectly in her chest. She arched backwards, eyes widening, as a glow began to emit from her eyes and mouth.

“Shield your eyes!” Q yelled at Bond, seconds before a blinding light filled the room, flashing for a brief, heated second before everything went dark once more. They were all blinking away light spots when it ended, but Q knew what he would find in the place where Adriel had stood: the cold body of a small girl whose body the angel had worn. He took a second to mutter a brief prayer for the child’s soul. With any luck, she would be welcomed in heaven, her soul at peace for the remainder of time. Although, that wasn't saying much. Not anymore.

"Not so unkillable after all, are you?" mused James, rubbing the tears away from his eyes. Q could have punched him in the face just then. _Just keep provoking the enemy. Only an acceptable course of action from James bloody Bond._ Samael was still dangerous, no matter that he was now outnumbered. As if to prove his point, Samael flung his hands out, and both Q and Bond went crashing to the ground. Q hit cold concrete with a soft _oomph_ , shielding his face instinctively as he tried to keep Samael in his field of vision, even though he knew logically that there was no way his arms would be able to stop a killing blow from an angel of destruction.

Samael looked less than disturbed at the loss of his sister, stepping over the body of the dead girl like it was trash. Q aimed his gun with unsteady hands as the other angel approached, skin burnished golden-brown in the dying sun. He looked glorious, every bit the avenging warrior depicted in human mythology, eyes burning bright and cold with intent. Q pulled the trigger, cursing when it clicked, the chambers empty. He had fired all of his bullets already.

Q closed his eyes as the large shadow loomed over his prone form. He could sense James a ways in the shadows, staggering unsteadily towards them. But weaponless, he could not prevent Samael from dealing the death blow if the angel was inclined to do so. In a battle of grace, his meager supply would run out far before the fully-powered angel did. He waited for death, hating that James was about to witness this, knowing that it would tear him up inside afterwards, knowing that he had been so close, and unable to prevent it from happening.

Yet the blow never came. Instead, Samael dropped down beside him, tilting his chin up with two fingers so that they were face to face. Up close, Q could see the spark of grace dancing in his pupils, an unconstrained wildness that spoke of his true nature. He wondered, idly, if James had ever seen his own dying embers of grace, perhaps mistaken it for a trick of the light; an illusion of shadows.

“I have underestimated you,” said Samael, poison dripping from every word. “We should have known that you were too far gone to be of use. Very well, Qaphsiel. You will be spared for one day more, at least.” Q couldn’t even exhale in relief, so close was he to Samael’s hateful glare. “But you cannot run from your duties forever. The next ones to visit will not be as forgiving as we have been. And when the Universe disintegrates into oblivion, know in your dying moments that you alone were to blame.”

There were many retorts that Q could have spat. But before he could voice any of them, Samael exploded into a column of light. From up close, Q could feel the heat emitting from him, singing itself onto the back of his eyelids in a gesture that he knew instantly that he would never be able to forget. He would always carry this moment with him, this sensation of flying too close to an imploding sun.

His vessel fell into Q’s arms. He checked the man—boy, really, now that his face was peaceful in sleep and no longer twisted up in Samael’s sneer—for a pulse, and was relieved when he found the weak flutter. He would live.

“James?” he called softly, hardly able to believe that they’d both made it out alive. They could go home now, together, and the fallout of this night could wait until later. All Q wanted to do was fall into bed with his lover and run his hands over his skin, reassuring himself of the solid fact of James Bond.

Soft footsteps pattered over the concrete floor. James walked up to him, his face obscured in shadows. His stride had only a small limp to it, and Q called out teasingly, “you know, I think this is the least amount of injuries you’ve ever amassed from a kidna—”

He broke off, seeing his hunting knife in James’ hands.

“James? What are you doing?” he asked quietly.

Bond’s face was set in a mask. It was an expression he wore often, used to confront enemies and coworkers alike. But never once, since they had begun dating, had Bond ever turned that empty stare on Q before, and the simple gesture somehow hurt deeper than any pain the angels could have visited on him.

“Who are you?” James asked, keeping the point of the knife pointed at Q’s heart. Q stared into his eyes with desperation, trying to find some hint of the lover who kissed him awake in the mornings, who pledged loyalty with quiet, unshakable gravity. There was none. His face was set into harsh granite, age lines seemingly cut into the grooves of his face, splitting the grimace into unyielding pieces. Q flinched at the next words, low and accusing. “ _What_ are you?”

“I’m not— I’m still an angel, technically, but at this point I’m basically human.” James didn’t reply, still studying him with that cold, emotionless face, and Q continued, rambling on desperately.

“James, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth. But I chose to come down here and live as a human. I don’t have my powers anymore. Well, most of them, but the point is, this is who I am now. Please James. I’m still Q.”

James’ gaze slid down to the body of the boy, still cradled in his lap. “And him?” he demanded.

“A vessel. Samael possessed him when he came down here. We don’t look anything like humans in our true forms, you know?” The horrified expression on James’ face was like a slap to the face, but Q couldn’t blame him. Not really. To find out about the existence of biblical and to discover that your coworker cum quartermaster cum lover is one of those creatures, on the same day—it had to be shocking.

That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

“And...you…” James looked up and down Q’s frame, and Q understood what he was asking.

“It’s different in my case. I tore out my wings.” There was the faintest glimmer of sympathy in James’ eyes at that. Just a slight flex of the mask, but Q latched on to it like a dying man. “I’m not sure how to explain it, really.”

“Try,” James demanded.

Q took a deep breath, stung by James’ tone. “Our physics goes beyond anything I could explain in this language. But angels have too much...energy, I guess, to manifest a stable corporeal form. When I lost my wings, I lost most of that energy, so I took on human form.”

All of a sudden, James just looked exhausted, the weight of reality crashing down on him all at once. The knife clattered to the ground with a sharp rattle, but he didn’t even twitch. “You _lied,_ Q,” he said softly. “I don’t know if I can trust you again after this. I don’t even know if anything you just said was true.”

“And you’ve never lied to me?” snapped Q. The accusation hurt, but it was just so fucking hypocritical of James to stand there with a straight face and accuse Q of doing something that the other man had built a career off of. “I thought that _you_ of all people would understand the importance of secrecy.”

But that was the problem. Q knew about James’ past, about the people who had betrayed him and the secrets they had taken to their graves. It was there in every one of his psych reports: TRUST ISSUES, branded in red ink across every page like a guarantee of instability. Was it fair of him to expect rationality from James in a situation like this? Or did his history excuse him? Could he even expect forgiveness, or was this too much of a hurdle for them to surmount? There were so many nuances of humanity to consider, so many subtleties that cold fact could not account for. It was dizzying.

James didn’t respond. Although, seeing as how he was no longer aiming a weapon at Q, he could count that as a minor victory. Instead, he glanced about the warehouse, eyes tracking back and forth before they fixed onto one spot. Q followed his gaze, grimacing as the mounted form of double-oh four’s body came into view again. The corpse was already attracting flies, releasing a sickly sweet smell of decay into the damp air. They would need to call in a retrieval team to return him to London. Q vaguely remembered that the man had had a wife, a Cambridge professor with a surprisingly warm smile and a keen mind for biotechnology. He was glad that he would not be the one to make the call.

“Tell me something, Q,” said James, without looking at him. “The tall one said that he wouldn’t be the last. They’re going to come back, aren’t they?”

Q nodded. “It's pretty bad. The sheer amounts of power released from warring angels...the effects will eventually be felt by all of us.”

“Can we stop them?”

“I don’t know,” said Q, and as the words fell from his lips, he reflected sadly that they may have been the truest things he had ever said to James Bond.


	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A third of the way through! I hope you're all still enjoying this :)

James didn’t come back to his flat.

They spent the journey home on the plane staring out of adjacent windows in silence. Q could sense that James was filled with questions, but whether it was wounded pride or stubborn unwillingness to care, the man never voiced any of them. Save the agreement that MI6 could not find out about the existence of angels. They’d settled on a story about a rival splinter cell attempting to take control of the city’s drug trade, too newly established to make it onto any official reports. It was shaky, but James had a deadpan manner of delivery that made it impossible for anyone to refute him.

Q was glad. He had a suspicion that if M found out what he really was, he’d be strapped to a gurney down in Bio with all of his organs on full display as soon as he stepped through the door. More horrifyingly, any government agency faced with a threat of such immensity would be buried in paperwork for the next century. Really, he was doing them a favour by keeping the news of this threat to himself.

As it turned out, M was ready to eviscerate him anyway.

“What the bloody hell were you thinking?” he had exploded, as soon as Q stepped into his office. “Running off to America like that, without a word to anyone. Why the hell didn’t you just let one of the agents take care of it?”

Q reflected sullenly that the man hadn’t even shown a smidgen of concern for the plasters littered over his skin before tearing into him.

“The timing was sensitive,” he attempted to explain, spitting out lies as fast as he could think of them. “There was no time to debrief or wait for official channels to open.” Then because M’s fury didn’t seem to have lessened, he added. “Just look at what they did to double-oh four…”

The guilt hit him immediately. It wasn’t technically a lie. But to use the death of a colleague as leverage…He wanted to take it back. Would have, if M had not winced and began berating him for his injuries instead.

The thing was, there wasn’t much M could do to him. Q knew too many state secrets to be fired. He was too valuable to be suspended for any period of time, and the PM generally frowned on executing employees. Besides, he did find the agents, and even brought back double-oh seven undamaged. Well—more or less. Under these circumstances, Mallory was powerless, and both men knew it.

Q didn’t correct Mallory when he insinuated that he’d run off because his boyfriend was in danger. Better to let the higher-ups believe his actions to be the result of a lover’s desperation than because of any supernatural motives. M eventually threw him out, after suspending him without pay for a week. A slap on the wrist; were he still in heaven, he’d be punished with holy fire for several decades for his disobedience. Still, Q made an attempt to seem abashed when he left.

And now here he was, sitting in a silent flat by himself. He wasn’t surprised when Bond had disappeared immediately after debriefing. Sad, but not surprised. Something twanged at his heart when he thought of the very real possibility that James wouldn’t be coming back, that whatever fragile thing they’d built together was destroyed forever by this recent turn of events.

But would he just take off without a word to Q, without even trying to hear him out?

He made himself a bowl of pasta, noodles still hard and sauce burnt at the edges. Bond was always the better cook—had a certain way with fire that found applications outside of arson. The memories of joint dinners at home made him queasy, and he dropped the bowl on the counter with a sigh. Every tick of the clock was another bullet punched into his abdomen, a reminder that another second was passing by without James there beside him.

And yet, as much as he hated wallowing in fear for their relationship, it was at least a distraction for the far more devastating news of the angelic war.

He was shaken; Samael had spoken of all-out destruction, of a disaster the size of which had not been seen since the days of the Lightbringer. He’d not been created yet in those days, but he could picture the battlefield as well as if he’d been there himself. The scent of scorched earth. The aftermath of screams as battalions fell to their deaths. The panicked cries of a thousand voices, all echoing around his head.

Worse, it was his fault. If he had not fallen prey to a moment of emotional weakness, if he had simply remained content with his assigned role and remained at a distance, as he was supposed to, all of this would just be a far-fetched hypothetical.

A sudden thought chilled him; was he the new Lucifer? Would they whisper about him for the coming millennia, spit his name out like a curse, a horror story for fledglings?

Lonely and worried, with the weight of two worlds on his shoulders, Q curled up in the king-sized bed he’d shared with James. Burying his face in the pillows gave a little comfort, as they still smelled of James’ aftershave. The bed seemed twice the size it had been before, a fallacy, considering that even when his lover was away for missions, it had not seemed so empty. He eventually drifted off after hours of fitful tossing and turning, having gained no more new insights than when he’d begun.

***

Q awoken suddenly, completely alert, in a cold sweat.

Something was wrong, although he could not see exactly what the immediate threat was, half-blind as he was without his glasses and in a darkened room to boot. He kept his breathing slow and steady, hoping that the potential risk in his bedroom had not sensed that he was awake. He made an internal assessment of the weapons stored in the room, grateful that James had insisted on arming the flat: one gun between the headboard and the mattress, one Taser buried in the large tasseled pillow that they had gutted, and a set of lasers positioned above the sole bedroom window, although he would need his phone to activate them.

He sniffed the air, and his forehead creased in a soft frown at the unmistakable tang of alcohol. Scotch, judging from the smell. Cheap scotch, too. What kind of assassin got pissed before paying a visit to his intended victim?

“There’s one thing I can’t get out of my head,” a rough voice drawled.

Q sat up, world tilting dangerously as his head adjusted to the rapid change. “James?” he gasped, fumbling on the bedside table for his glasses. He threw them on, almost stabbing himself in the eye in the process, and turned on the bedside lamp.

James was still dressed in the dirty, torn up suit he had come back from America in. Q’s first thought was dismay that the man was lying on his nice, white sheets that he had just laundered. There was a nasty cut over his left eyebrow that hadn’t been there before, and both blood and liquor specks littered the front of his dress shirt. He was rumpled in a way he rarely was, even after torture, and Q’s heart twisted to see the man so out of shape. His next emotion was anger. How dare Bond worry him like that, especially so soon after evading one group of angels, and then waltz into bed like it was his God-given right?

“Explain, or I’ll throttle you so hard you’ll regret not having put on a Kevlar vest under that suit,” he growled. “And what are you doing here? I thought you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore.”

In typical, irritating Bond fashion, James ignored him. “You told that other angel that you’ve only been on earth for four years.”

Q frowned. Of all the conversations that he’d expected—well, hoped, to have with Bond, this was not one of them. “Well, yes. But don’t make any age jokes. I’ve been around since the first of your gilled ancestors hopped onto land.”

Curiosity burned bright in Bond’s bloodshot eyes. Despite his reputation as a blunt instrument, Bond was terrifyingly smart, and as inquisitive as an ambitious puppy. If he ever forgave Q for lying to him, Q suspected that he would be swamped down in questions about his kind for the rest of his mortal life. “Fascinating, but not what I was getting at,” he said instead. “See, four years ago, I almost died.”

Oh. Oh shit. Trust Bond to nose out the one topic that he really, really did not want to share.

Unperturbed at Q’s silence, James continued. “A green agent shot me off of a train in...Istanbul, I believe it was. Everyone wrote me off as dead. M even wrote a half-decent obituary for me.”

“Yes, I know that. You’ve got the bloody thing framed and mounted on the wall. Clearly you’re not dead, or you wouldn’t be prattling on like this,” Q snapped, although the sullen blush on his face gave away his discomfort.

“Brilliant observation. I’m _not_ dead. They found me washed up on the shore. I was told that it was a miracle worthy of no less than divine intervention; the river was too deep in that area for me to have done anything but sink to the bottom. For months after that, the locals treated me like a deity. It was rather a pleasant change of pace.”

Wryly, Q thought to himself that double-oh seven could really teach the blokes down at Interrogations a thing or two. The man kept a cool, almost disinterested façade, voice conversational and friendly, but every syllable made Q squirm, wishing he was anywhere but here.

“That must have done wonders for your ego.”

James didn’t respond with his usual wit. Instead, his voice cracked, changing from something confident and dangerous to painfully, vulnerably human. “It wasn’t divine intervention, was it?” His tone made it clear that it was not a question, and Q’s heart almost broke.

The silence stretched on, and at last, Q bowed his head.

“No,” he choked out, surprised to find tears in his eyes. Four years, and he would never forget the burning agony of that day, the terror and the sensation of being all alone in the world, disconnected from everyone that he had known, shoved into a body that he hardly recognized. His entire being, altered irrevocably for the sake of one human. One beautiful, mesmerizing human with the most gorgeous soul he had ever seen. Even seeing that man in front of him now, bedraggled and bloody with the stench of liquor all over his mouth, he was no less dazzled than he had been, all those years ago. “No, just me.”

Then Bond’s lips were on his and despite the harsh bite of alcohol on Bond’s breath, Q pressed into it desperately, a single sob rattling his chest at the idea that he could have, almost _did_ lose this. It was nothing like the slow, soft kisses he had shared with Bond in the past, both of them so unused to the idea of a relationship that they’d both been afraid to push too far and hurt the other. Now Bond was all animal desperation, lips so hard against his own that Q knew they would bruise in the morning. He reciprocated with a sharp nip of his own against Bond’s top lip, cock stirring when he heard the man’s response of a deep growl.

“You’re so bloody stupid,” James whispered, and it should have sounded like an insult, but the way Bond said it just made Q want to rip off the remnants of that suit and shag him into the bed. That thought was derailed when James threw Q onto his back and himself on top of Q, to be replaced with the equally pleasing imagery of James pounding into him, marking him from the inside out as his. Not heaven’s, not the angels’. Bond’s.

“Don’t leave me again,” Q demanded, barely having the presence of mind to choke out those few syllables, distracted as he was by Bond’s hands coursing down his body. He wanted it, wanted the physical intimacy. But the wounds of earlier were still too raw for him to acquiesce to Bond’s touch just yet. “Please just talk to me next time. _Iabes—God,_ James, I can’t—you can’t just—” he broke off with a small sob.

Surprisingly gentle hands captured his chin, preventing him from looking away like he wanted to. Q felt pinned under that intense stare. Vulnerable. Raw. Shy in a way that was utterly unbecoming of an eons-old creature but this was what James Bond did to him. Nothing, no one else brought his emotions to the core like Bond.

James didn’t say anything, but as he touched his forehead to Q’s, Q understood.

Q took his hand in his own. James didn’t break eye contact, but his fingers twitched, and very deliberately, Q moved the broad palm to cup his cock.

Taking that as the invitation he’d been waiting for, James continued. His hands were firm, almost harsh as he tore Q’s pants away from him, leaving his lower half bare and pale in the wan moonlight. Thick fingers dug into his thighs, lifting them up and propping Q’s legs onto James’ shoulders, exposing his most intimate areas to the man’s wild gaze.

"How smashed are you?" Q asked. Bond had a remarkably high tolerance, but he would be damned if he let the man fuck him with anything less than full consent.

Bond snorted, dropping wet hot kisses along his neck. "Not drunk enough that you need to worry about my virtue." As if proving his point, he pressed one finger to the outside of Q's rim, pressing firmly enough that the muscle twitched around his finger, attempting to clench down.

Q tossed him the small tube of lubricant and James wasted no time in slicking up two fingers, plunging them in with no pretense. The stretch was almost too much, too fast, but Q couldn’t give a damn about such a small amount of pain at the moment. He felt awake, alive, tilting his hips forward in order to impale himself further on the long appendages.

James’ laugh sounded more like a gasp for breath. “I always knew I was going to hell. I didn’t expect to get there by buggering an angel.”

“Not hell. Heaven,” Q panted, practically tearing Bond’s fingers away from his arse. Fuck foreplay, he needed that thing inside of him, now. James kissed him again, though he was so out of breath that they weren’t doing anything more dexterous than resting their lips against each other, sharing breath. He keened at the first press of cock to his trembling hole, the sharp, fluttery sounds a perfect counterpoint to Bond’s own low moan.

Bond made an inquisitive, humming sound, so he continued. “Your soul. So fucking bright. Can’t end up anywhere else but heaven.”

The rhythm faltered as James’ hips stuttered, and Q cracked open one narrowed eye to see the raw shock in the other man’s eyes.

“You can see my soul?” whispered James. His pace was almost nonexistent now, and Q gave an impatient thrust with his own hips to get Bond back on the right track.

“Yes,” he replied simply. “And if you ever doubt how good of a man you are, remember this: I’ve watched over earth for billions of years. Yours was the only soul that I found worthy of falling for.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?” Bond asked. Q would’ve felt hurt, but his voice sounded so damn _plaintive_ , like he was that twelve year old boy losing his parents all over again—Q couldn’t feel anything but the desire to comfort. To reassure.

He looped his arms around James’ neck and pulled him close, noses bumping together with atypical clumsiness. “I didn’t lie when I told you I wanted you,” he panted, using the same stern voice he did to direct his agents through tricky extractions.

“I didn’t lie when I introduced myself to you as your quartermaster. Your quartermaster. Because don’t think for a second that I wouldn’t tear down all of British government to keep you safe.”

“That’s bordering on treason,” Bond joked weakly, but Q saw the rising dampness in his eyes.

“James, I didn’t lie when I promised I would always, always bring you home. Isn’t that worth something?”

Bond said nothing, and as vulnerable as Q felt, exposing all of his secrets to him like that, he took a certain pleasure in rendering the man speechless for the first time in his life. They rocked against each other, angel and man, joined into one on sweat soaked sheets. Bond’s rough thrusts morphed into something slower, deeper, and more reverential. He dragged against Q’s prostate with every move, and Q reached one hand down, slipping it around his cock with a muffled groan.

When Q came, his low cry of Bond’s name sounded awfully like a prayer.

They separated with a wet squelch that wasn’t in the least bit sexy. Q felt the bed shake as James collapsed next to him, both of them breathing hard. Neither of them spoke as they came down from the afterglow, the silence threatening to turn into something more awkward now that neither of them were driven by lust anymore. Q floundered for something to say, something that would alleviate the heavy atmosphere in the room.

What he came up with was: “You’ve been holding out on me.”

Bond laughed once, and Q relaxed slightly as they slipped into the familiar easiness of pillow talk. “I could say the same. You’re quite the wild little boffin when you put your mind to it.”

“I am not _little_ ,” Q sniffed. “My true form would put your Big Ben to shame.”

He felt Bond tense, but the man didn’t seem as guarded as he retorted. “Is that the angelic equivalent of a dick waving competition?”

Q giggled, snuggling up to James. A heavy arm wound against him, and he felt almost comforted, able to forget everything else for a little while in the cocoon of Bond’s embrace. With the quiet thrum of James’ heartbeat underneath his ear, it seemed impossible that anything could disturb their peace.

They had more to talk about, Q knew. He was not naïve enough to believe that one good shag had resolved all of their problems. But for now, there was James, and there was him, and they were together. Somehow, things didn’t seem so terrifying when he had his partner beside him once more. Q was just entering the pleasantly hazy realm between sleep and waking when James spoke again.

“Q?”

“Hmm?”

“I bet your true form was beautiful as well.”

Q swallowed hard, that indescribable emotion making his blood sing. “Thank you, James.”


	7. Chapter 6

Q sat cross-legged on a jut in the rock of a steep mountain. Snow dusted the ground, crunching when he shivered in the brisk breeze and dancing up in whirlwinds of activity around him. The sun shone brightly, wedges of powdery light glittering off the ice, so bright that it almost blinded him. Gazing down at the blurry landscape below him was calming, reminiscent of similar days in heaven. He didn’t question where he was, or how he got there.

He was holy again, hymns coursing through his veins, filling him with glorious purpose. And oh, he was _beautiful._ How had he forgotten this power? How had he forgotten what it felt like to be aware of every atom of his body, so profoundly in sync with the universe that it threatened to engulf his entire consciousness?

“Qaphsiel.”

With a violent yelp, Q leapt up, nearly launching himself off the cliff.

“Metatron,” he grumbled, the sensation of power as fleeting as it had come. “Stalking me during the day wasn’t enough? You have to intrude into my dreams too?”

“We will have a word with the Dominions about stricter border control,” the Voice promised. Q thought it might have been his imagination, but the Metatron almost sounded...apologetic. “It was not our desire to have you or your humans harmed. We wish only to speak to you, Qaphsiel.”

Q sighed, sitting back down and letting his feet dangle over the cliff’s edge. “Bit late for just ‘talking’, don’t you think?” he asked bitterly. “If you wanted to talk, you shouldn’t have let your minions hurt my agents. Forgive me if I don’t trust you. Also, it’s Q,” he added as an afterthought.

“Our primary concern is the well-being of heaven. And you cannot deny that you have threatened that well-being,” boomed the Metatron, making the stone tremble. A pile of snow slid onto Q’s head, and he shook it off impatiently.

“What do you want me to say? Sorry?” Q snapped. “I never meant to start a war, okay? But falling was my choice, and I still stand by it. Maybe angels should learn to make their own decisions instead of trying to control each other like some great, bloody hive mind!”

One of these days, he should really try to filter his words before he said them out loud. Sure, he couldn’t be harmed as long as he was in a dream instead of the conscious dimension, but the angels had already proven that they were willing to transgress boundaries in order to hurt the people Q loved. And the Metatron was not especially known for its mercy.

“You are impertinent,” the Voice thundered. “If we were not in need of you, we would turn you into a humbler lifeform. A potted fern would suffice.” Q opened his mouth, indignant, but another tremor shook the stone, and it was all he could do to cling on and hope he didn’t fall off. “Nevertheless,” the Metatron continued, “We are offering you the chance to save us all. Like it or not, you know that our lack of a Watcher has every potential to decimate the fragile threads of human existence.”

Q nodded, suspicious. “You still haven’t explained that. Why exactly hasn’t a new Watcher been appointed?”

“Watchers do not _resign_ ,” the Metatron spat with disdain. “It is part of your biology, the essence of your holiness. To transfer the power, a rite must be performed.”

“A rite,” said Q, flatly. Images flashed through his memories. Sacrifices bound to a stone altar. Drinking blood from a chalice. Sweet smoke intermingled with the reek of spilled intestines.

“It is the only way. Heed our words or watch the world crumble by your hand.”

“And the war?” Q asked, skeptical. “What’s being done about the masses of angels killing each other?”

A biting wind rolled over the mountains. Q’s fingers were beginning to feel numb. He thrust them into the waistband of his sleep pants, seeking out body heat. “That is not your concern. Once the new Watcher is appointed, all will fall into place.”

Oh, now that sounded suspicious. From his years in the espionage game, Q knew a thing about withholding vital information. This had to be a trap, right? Some sort of convoluted punishment for abandoning his post. Except it also made sense. There was power in the old, primal ways. In the strength of conviction and long-established ceremonies.

The question was, what did those ceremonies entail?

“Fine, I’ll do it,” said Q, feeling giddy and reckless. Call it repentance. Call it justice for the way double-oh four was killed. Call it stupidity borne from impending frostbite. Whatever it was, he had to see this mess through to the end.

“Excellent.” With those words, Q got the uncanny sensation that he had just traded his soul to the devil, but he couldn’t see any reason not to accept the Metatron’s deal. This was no longer just about protecting himself; it was about saving the lives of all his human compatriots from death by holy fire, or something equally unpleasant.

“Listen closely, for these are the three elements of the spell you will need to create the seal.”

“How very Medieval,” Q muttered in an undertone, half terrified and half mutinous.

The Metatron kept talking, seemingly choosing to ignore Q’s petulance. “First, the blood of a freshly fallen star. Second, the devil’s kiss, given freely. And third, cursed grace from a former angel. We imagine you will have no trouble collecting that one.”

Ignoring the jibe, Q snorted. “Not very poetic. Aren’t prophesies supposed to be delivered in verse?”

“We are not patrons of the arts.” Its voice changed, like nails on a chalkboard, and Q shuddered as the powerful voice rang out, patience apparently depleted. “We are the song that sang the Universe into existence. We are the death rattle when empires fall. And we have spoken. Heed this, Qaphsiel of the Grigori—” The formal title echoed around the mountain, turning into a million thundering cries. “Once all three are found, delivered to the origin of the world by dust of the world, so the earth shall tremble, the heavens sing, and the Sight reopened.   _So mote it be._ ”

To Q’s dismay, the power of those last four words shook the cliff enough to crack the stone. He found the ground under him slipping, breaking, turning to dust under his feet. He cried out desperately for the Metatron, asking it to explain, praying for some sort of divine inspiration. With a final groan, the cliff gave out, and Q found himself tumbling to the ground. He tried in vain to stretch out his wings, only to turn around and see bloody stumps on his back, and he was falling, falling…

...falling into the greatest pleasure he had ever known.

Something wonderful was happening to his cock. He shifted restlessly, sleep still clinging to him like cobwebs, and he heard someone laugh throatily. The vibrations of their laughter stimulated his rapidly hardening cock, and he shifted again, slightly disoriented from the rapid shift of events, but too sleep-hazy to do anything but bask in the mind-numbing pleasure on offer.

James pulled back from his cock to tsk. “Lazy, lazy,” he smirked. Q couldn’t be arsed to come up with a witty retort, so he simply whined, one hand reaching for James’ hair to pull him back onto his member.

James was obviously in no hurry, tongue lapping thick stripes across his heated skin. He fondled Q’s bollocks with one hand, cupping the soft sac and squeezing gently. Q looked down to see James staring back at him, those blue eyes nearly black in the faint light and containing the suggestion of a challenge in them. Without breaking eye contact, he inhaled deeply, lips pressed in a kiss to Q’s cockhead.

“Fuck,” Q breathed out. There was something so undeniably erotic about the image of James Bond with his lips stretched tight around Q, cheeks hollowing rhythmically as he sucked with leisure. James licked up the vein on the underside of his cock and Q’s hips buckled, unable to stand the relentless assault of pleasure. But James just pressed down on his hips, slamming him back down against the mattress. Q tried to protest, to say something inane like “don’t stop” or “fuck that feels so good” or even Enochian exclamations of joy but that skillful, sadistic tongue only made him throw his head back, mouth open in a silent scream.

Then James seemed to steel himself with a sharp intake of breath, and before Q could gather the wits needed to prepare himself, James took his entire length down his throat. In that instant, any semblance of restraint he’d managed to cultivate disappeared, and he thrust forwards into that wonderful heat in small, rabbit-like pumps. For his part, James just relaxed and let him, that same insolent smile in his eyes the whole time while Q fell apart.

Orgasm hit him like a sucker punch, making him double up, curling around James’ head with all the grace of a newborn kitten. Dimly, he recognized the soft sensation of James’ throat working around him, swallowing up every pump of cum, but he couldn’t really bask in the sensation, not when his body twitched and shuddered in the afterglow, dancing in the electricity of pleasure.

James drew back with a low gasp, but otherwise remained unruffled. How the man managed to do that, Q would never understand—he himself was always a mess after giving head; breathing wrecked, come splattered in the corner of his mouth, smelling like musk and saliva for the rest of the day. James may as well have been in the middle of a dinner party.

“As your quartermaster, I command you to do that every morning. For queen and country, of course,” Q panted, drawing James up for a kiss. James obliged easily, and Q tasted himself on the other man’s tongue. Bitter musk and _James_ intermingling into something that tasted better than ambrosia.

“I’m sure this isn’t what the Catholics had in mind when they said to get on your knees,” James deadpanned.

Q groaned. “For heaven’s sake. Is this how it’s going to be on from now on? Religion jokes? I shudder to think what you would do if it turned out that I was a demon.”

To his gratification, James looked alarmed, and his hand twitched towards the pillow for the gun Q knew was hidden there. “Are you telling me that demons are real?”

“Oh, yeah,” Q agreed easily, controlling his expression with limited success at James’ appalled look. “Nasty little blighters. Very angry, very mean. They smell terrible too, like rotten eggs and public toilets.” Then because James looked like he was stressed enough to explode something for the pleasure of watching it explode, he amended hastily, “but they come to earth even less than the angels do. They’re not very bright, so they prefer to stay in the underworld and prod tormented souls with sticks.”

James rolled his eyes. “I give you a blow job, and you give me an aneurysm.” But he didn’t resist Q when he started combing his fingers through James’ sleep-ruffled, dirty blond hair, so Q figured he couldn’t be _too_ upset.

But all this talk about angels and demons reminded Q of his dream. A shame, really. He’d rather spend the day in bed with James, both of them on break together for the first time in ages. Not to mention, there was that long-overdue talk to have about their relationship. Still. War. Homicidal angels. Sealing heaven away. All things of marginally greater importance.

“We should talk.” Then because James tensed, he clarified. “I had a dream last night.”

James leered. “Oh?”

“Not that kind of dream—” Q tried to explain, only to get cut off by the cheerful jingle of his work phone.

“They couldn’t even suspend you for twenty-four hours?” James said incredulously, as Q dove for his trousers, cursing loudly in four different languages. If it was another idiot who broke the firewalls, well, chemical castration would only be the tip of the iceberg as far as Q was concerned. “Unless Buckingham Palace is burning down, I don’t want to hear it,” he snapped.

“Q?” Oh bugger, it was Tanner. Likely wouldn’t be something that Q could get out of through impressive-sounding talk of higher-level physics. “Have you seen the news?”

Dread pooled in Q’s stomach. What was it this time? Another assault on earth? He should turn on the telly, but trepidation froze him where he stood. Bodies littered in the streets. The Atlantic turned the shade of freshly spilled blood. An entire garrison of angels marching through Trafalgar Square, laying waste to anything standing in their way. “No,” he choked out. Behind him, James raised his head sharply at the tone. “No, what’s wrong?”

“There was a massive storm of comets falling over Northern Ireland just a few hours ago. Meteorologists are flummoxed, the public is freaked out, and the PM’s worried that it was a warning of future terrorist attacks on the United Kingdom.”

Q snorted, despite the shiver that ran down his spine. “Bloody idiot.”

“He’s turned Q-branch into a weather monitoring station. We need you to come and assuage his concerns, so we can get back to real work, instead of chasing after flying rocks.”

Q sighed. “I’ll be down soon.”

“What was it? More angels?” James demanded as soon as Q hung up, looking deadly even whilst naked, tangled in Q’s favourite fluffy comforter.

“I think so,” said Q, pulling his socks on. Of course it would just be his luck to have another angel-related catastrophe on his hands so soon. At least this one didn’t seem deadly, yet. “Freak comet strikes on Ireland. It’s likely something going on in heaven; angels are hell on the radio waves. On the plus side, no one seems like they’re planning to kill us.”

“I’m coming with you,” said James, in a tone that brooked no argument. Q was tempted to remind him of how well their last run-in with the angels had gone, but it touched him that James was willing to face the possibility of confronting them once again, for his sake.

_Well, there will be time aplenty to work past our issues,_ Q told himself as he watched James strap wicked-looking knives to the outside of his thighs. _Hopefully._

 


	8. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the long hiatus!! Now that it's winter break, updates should be coming a lot more frequently. I'm aiming to have all the chapters posted before the end of January :)

It turned out that Q’s assistance wasn’t required after all; the comet storm died down without any casualties, and Q made up an excuse about one of his generators being too powerful and disturbing the electromagnetic force fields in that particular region. No one except Q-branch was very clear on exactly what they did down in Q-branch, so the incident faded away without much of a stir.

His trip up to Ireland, on the other hand, was hardly noticed. To ensure a lack of interruptions, he told HR that he and Bond were taking a joint vacation together. Officially, he would be constantly available for consultation, but he’d had a private word with his branch to inform them that he was not to be disturbed unless the world was burning down. And Q was not a man for hyperbole.

Besides, the possibility of the world burning down really wasn’t as remote as he’d have believed only a week ago.

“Some vacation,” Bond grumbled, right on cue, as they hit the umpteenth pothole on the winding roads of southern Ireland. Q could practically hear his teeth grind when the baggage in the back shifted, no doubt scratching the upholstery and making James’ blood pressure rise. He resisted the urge to laugh.

“Remind me why we’re doing this again? There are hundreds of stone circles in less remote parts of Ireland, not to mention bloody England.”

Q sighed. He suspected the drive wasn’t the cause of Bond’s ire; the man had once crouched, unmoving, for six hours straight to get the head shot on a target. Despite his propensity for disaster, he knew how to be patient. “The barrier there is thin. We’ll have an easier time summoning Lucifer there than anywhere else.”

At the name of Lucifer, James’ hands tightened infinitesimally on the wheel. Ah, of course. It wasn’t like Q was thrilled about summoning the most infamous fallen angel in history either, but seeing as how they had no idea what the blood of a fallen star was supposed to be, James had reluctantly agreed that calling upon Lucifer was the only thing they could do for now.

James had wanted to wait a few days, find out more about what they were about to face. The prospect of coming face to face with the devil himself didn’t seem to faze him as much as it would a normal person; Q figured he viewed the threat as just another target. Kill or be killed. It was insane, but he was learning firsthand how adaptive James Bond really could be.

James had wanted to wait, but angelic omens were arriving with increasing frequency. There was a mass suicide of migratory birds only a few hours ago, and a day before that, a report came in of massive wings seared on the western side of the K2. The fabric of the Universe was wearing thin, and any day now, the armies of heaven would break through, and then it might as well be the End Times.

At least the drive was pretty. Living in London, Q had almost become used to the grey skies, the tall buildings crowding out the stars and the throng of people pressing in on him from all sides. Here in the countryside, it was peaceful. He’d rolled down the windows, and the cool night air prickled at his lungs like ginger and spearmint. Even in the dark, the lush landscape was nearly too vibrant to behold.

He was reminded of the days after he first fell. He’d had to purchase a pair of sunglasses; the intensity of colours, the thick lines of textures, the unbearable brightness of the pools of light that spilled from the sky was too much for his new eyes to handle without stabs of pain to his brain. Even today, the only thing he could compare that feeling to was the heat of viewing the sun through a telescope. Too close up, too much.

James’ voice interrupted his thoughts. “This Lucifer. What is he like?”

The temperature seemed to drop several degrees, and Q shivered, wondering how best to describe the most infamous angel in existence. “I wasn’t created when he was still in heaven, but those who remembered him often recounted his stories.” James remained expectantly silent, so he continued. “Most of them were rubbish, looking back on it now. Boogeymen stories to frighten us into obedience. Those were the official stories told about him, but out of earshot of the others, there was always one or two angels willing to share the real history.”

Q remembered being a young angel, endlessly curious, secretly in awe of the angel who had almost torn the Kingdom in half. It was his brother Samael who had first told him the hidden accounts of Lucifer, passed down to him illicitly through generations of truth-seekers. He suppressed the wave of melancholy that rippled through him at the memory of his brother, back when they were still friends, uncomplicated by the weight of politics.

“It wasn’t a secret that he was the favourite son. Sure, you hear all the stories about Michael being the most loyal. The ideal angel. But he was never anything more than a good soldier. Whereas Lucifer...he asked questions to things that the others had never imagined would need to be questioned. He had his own unique brand of morality, untouched by anything that heaven demanded of him. He was a brilliant tactician. A ruthless enemy. Some say that the real reason he was exiled from heaven was because he could easily have taken over from God if he had the inclination.”

“I hope you don’t take this as an insult, but he sounds a lot like you,” said James, thoughtfully.

Stunned, Q gaped. His mouth opened and closed like a floundering fish. Clad in a cardigan rumpled from hours on the road and hair still its usual, uncombed mess, he doubted he looked like someone worthy of comparison with the Lightbringer himself. _If that was even a compliment._ But before he could protest, James jerked the wheel of the car on a sharp turn that sent Q crashing into the door. “We’re here,” said James. The placid tone of his voice dissolving into the mist, turning into something unperceivably dangerous. Concealed knives and tie garrets.

The sight of the tallest stone immediately sent Q’s grace aflutter. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling his grace scream out, pulling him towards the ring. Yes, this had to be the place. The sheer raw power here called out to him, echoes of a melody he may have heard once, in a dream. “Do you feel that?” he murmured, mesmerised.

James frowned, walking closer and closer to the ring. His brow was creased in concentration as he moved through the muddy undergrowth like a predator, seemingly unruffled despite the immense amount of power gathered there. “There’s some sort of heat spreading through me. Is that it?”

“Yes, it’s the energies of the other realms coming through,” explained Q, hoisting the rucksack full of summoning supplies out of the trunk. “If the barrier here broke entirely, the sheer concentrated energy would incinerate your body before you could see it coming.”

“Of course it will,” James muttered. Q eyed him; he was displaying a remarkable amount of self-control for a mortal, but Q knew him. He could see how tightly wound his lover’s body was, confronted with something he didn’t understand, something dangerous that he couldn’t protect Q from. He wrapped an arm around James’ waist gently, trying not to startle the man. James looked down at him in surprise, but the tight lines around his eyes relaxed infinitesimally.

The Circle really was beautiful. The air was still, everything silent except the soft whispers of their footsteps on grass. There was a solemnity, a sense of anticipation held in the stones that gave the impression that one was smaller than they really were. It was humbling. Were it not for the impending deadline of their task, Q would have been tempted to simply lie down with James beside him, and bask in the ancient power of Kealkil.

Instead, he dumped out their ingredients in the middle of the ring. James studied them curiously; Q had done the packing for their trip, and he knew that James would be perplexed at the things he had collected.

Pinching a bit of bone in two fingers, James wrinkled his nose. “You’ll forgive me if I say that this is all a little too New Age for me.”

“It’s not New Age. It’s a very old, very powerful summoning spell. Stop your complaining and spread the rabbit’s blood in a circle around us.” While James, thankfully, did what he was told, Q got out the bottle of holy oil. Using it to paint designs in the dark wasn’t as hard as he’d feared, since the power of the Circle practically guided his hand. He could feel the spell rising as he worked, a heady, blissful feeling that suffused him from head to toe. Despite the immensity of the task at hand, Q found himself grinning.

“Come stand next to me,” Q called, when it seemed that James was finished with the circle of blood. He didn’t bother to disguise his amusement at the sight, a man who practically washed his hands in the blood of terrorists, holding the empty bottle of rabbit’s blood like it was the filthiest thing he’d ever touched. When he was sure that James was out of the way of any of the oil, he struck a match and tossed it to the ground.

Fire leapt up immediately, blazing wherever Q had painted with oil. James cursed, turning about himself and surveying the landscape with horrified awe. The fire, unnaturally tall, danced at about the level of their waists, drowning the landscape in shades of yellow and orange. The quiet power of the Circle seemed to turn into something more sinister. Something dark.

“Q, are you sure this is the right thing to do?” James demanded. “You know I’m not usually one for caution, but this is beginning to feel like a stupendously idiotic idea.”

“Too late to turn back now!” Q shouted, raising his voice to be heard over the crackling of the flames. “Can’t stop now that the circle has been cast, or we’ll be inviting all sorts of nasties over.” From James’ thunderous glare, he realised that was something he should have shared beforehand. Shit. This ‘complete honesty’ thing was harder than he’d expected.

He took the teeth (from a freshly killed mouse, and the memory nearly made him gag) and the powdered nightshade, tossing them into the fire. The flame immediately turned a dull shade of green, reflecting the nausea that Q felt in the pit of his stomach. He looked at James. “If I don’t make it…” he began.

“Sod that,” James growled. “Listen to me, Q. If he kills you, I may as well be a dead man walking. One of us is going to make it out of this alive, so if I give the signal, you run. I’ll buy you enough time to get away.”

There was no way that Q was going to leave James to die alone, but he nodded anyways, seeing no point in wasting time arguing. “Are you ready?”

James looked suspicious—he knew Q too well to believe he’d just acquiesce without a fight. “No. Go ahead.”

Q took a deep breath and began the ancient Enochian chant that would complete the ritual. He closed his eyes as he spoke, feeling the searing heat of the fire on his skin, the ground trembling beneath his feet. He could sense James beside him, coiled as tight as a snake. He could feel the hidden barrier between worlds dissolving, casting his grace into the pit in search of the one he sought.

He uttered the last word sharply, nearly screaming it out. Immediately, everything died down. The fire, the trembling, the pungent scent of sulfur in the air.

“What’s happening?” James asked, right before the ground opened up with a brilliant burst of light. Q wrenched his head away from its heat, trying to blink away the spots in his vision. The scent of sulfur grew strong again, uncomfortably intense.

Of course. Lucifer wasn’t known as the Lightbringer for nothing.

“Well, well,” a thickly accented voice drawled. In his confusion, Q couldn’t decipher what kind of accent it was, but he sensed James stiffen beside him. “Little brother. Not much manages to surprise me anymore, but you’ve certainly managed the improbable.”

The fire was burning again, returned to its regular shade of orange-yellow. They illuminated a man dressed in all black, around the same age as James, though perhaps a bit older. He wore his blonde hair carelessly, swept back on his forehead almost roguishly. When he smiled, his entire face seemed to pull back, giving the appearance of a stiff rubber mask, or perhaps just an angel unused to human expressions. The most striking thing about his features was a puckered scar that ran the length of his right cheek, stopping mere millimeters away from the tip of his mouth. The scar twinged a memory inside him, but he couldn’t place it.

“ _You._ ” James spat. And to Q’s horror, he drew his gun, lunging at Lucifer.

“James, stop!” Q cried, barely catching the man about the waist. What was the matter with him? Lucifer, for his part, only looked amused, and did not move an inch. His keen, snake-like eyes studied the pair with interest.

“I wear betrayal well, don’t I?” said Lucifer to James, in that same lilting, conversational tone that sent prickles down Q’s spine.

Everything happened quickly after that.

James fired three shots at Lucifer before Q could scream at him to ‘ _use your head, he’s messing with you on purpose._ ’ The former angel just sighed with boredom and snapped his fingers. The bullets exploded in mid-air, filling the air with the smell of gunpowder and oil. Another snap of the fingers, and both Q and James were on the ground, unable to move a muscle.

“Get the fuck out of his skin,” James managed to force out, through a stiff jaw, and Q remembered. Alec Trevelyan. James’ former best friend, who he’d met in the navy and eventually joined MI6 with. A man with whom he’d shared everything, who he’d nearly died for a few times. A man who had betrayed him, in the end.

Ah, fuck. Alec Trevelyan, the First. If Vesper was an unspeakable memory, then Alec was an explosives-packed box stamped with big red “DO NOT TOUCH” signs all over it. No wonder James was pissed.

As enlightening as the knowledge was, it didn’t do him any good when Lucifer stood over their prone bodies, wearing that fake stretched smile. Adrenaline pumped through him as he tried to reach for James. He was very conscious of the fact that Lucifer could turn them both into confetti in less than the time it takes to blink.

“It’s been so long since I’ve been up here,” Lucifer mused, not paying attention to either of them. “Ireland, is it? Very nice. Tell, me, are they still having trouble with that famine? Forgive me if I seem out of the loop, I _have_ been stuck in a burning pit all this time.”

“We need your help,” said Q, ignoring the man—angel— _Devil’s_ soft musings.

“My help?” Lucifer didn’t seem angry, only amused, and Q couldn’t decide which would’ve been scarier. “Why would I help you, when I could simply pull your guts out through your mouth for summoning me here and wreak havoc on your filthy planet?”

Was his mouth this dry before? Q swallowed hard, trying to remember the script that he and James had decided on beforehand. “The fate of the Universe is at stake. All of Heaven, Earth, Hell. Destroy me, and you sentence your own home to certain destruction.”

Lucifer chuckled. “Your foolhardiness is intriguing, little angel. Or...not much of an angel anymore, are you?” His bright gaze seemed to strip away all of Q’s defences, and the knowing gleam in Lucifer’s eyes made him want to cringe away. “No, you think I care about the stinking pit they’ve sentenced me to? Let it burn. Let it all burn.” He cocked his head, and Q felt James jerk, his wide eyes staring upwards, unseeing, as his body convulsed.

“Stop it!” he cried desperately, trying to break free from the spell Lucifer had cast over his body. It was no use. Panic overwhelmed him; he should have listened to James when he had said this was a bad idea. If Lucifer wouldn’t hear him out, his options for escape would diminish to nothing.

Lucifer chuckled. “You get so used to torture in hell. I find myself a bit of a...connoisseur when it comes to human pain. For example,” he twirled a finger lazily, and James’ eyes rolled back into his head as he gave a wet moan. “Like rich wine, wouldn’t you say?”

“Leave him be,” ordered Q, knowing that he would’ve been shaking all over if it wasn’t for Lucifer’s spell. “You would honestly be satisfied to let the angels be destroyed by a power outside your control? When you’ve waited millennia for the chance to take back what’s yours?”

To his relief, Lucifer let James slump back to the ground. Q wanted to take his hand in reassurance, or at least ask the man if he was alright, but time was already trickling down. Any second, Lucifer could grow bored with him, and he would become nothing more than a Q-shaped smear on the ground.

“Your attempts at manipulation are weak,” said Lucifer. “But I admire the effort. Perhaps you’re not as much of a suck-up as the rest of those feathered morons.”

“Thank you?” said Q, confused. Had Lucifer just…given him a compliment?

“You have my attention. Tell me what it is you require from me.”

“The kiss of the devil, freely bestowed,” said Q, his chin tilted up defiantly, daring Lucifer to mock him.

Lucifer looked thoughtful. “Not many rituals call for that, these days.”

“This isn’t a ritual that’s ever been performed before.”

“No? That rules out all the morbid little revenge spells that foolish teenagers usually call my demons up for. Not that I believe you’re infantile enough to bother with such trivialities, brother.” All of a sudden, Q knew what it was about Lucifer that made his skin crawl. Although he smiled with the oily charm of a car salesman, there was nothing in his eyes. No spark of a soul, no glimmer of grace, nothing. Just the cold, flat gaze of something dead, that’s been dead for a long time.

He felt like throwing up.

Unbothered by Q’s scrutiny, Lucifer continued. “I suppose you could be here to beg me to raise a soul from hell, or even steal one from heaven?” His gaze flicked over Bond. “Yes, I could see why this one would have an interest in that.” James made an inarticulate noise of fury while Lucifer continued blithely. “Unless...you wouldn’t also be hunting for star blood, by any chance?”

Ah, bollocks, he suspected. “It wouldn’t be your concern even if that was true,” said Q calmly, tone betraying nothing. James shot him a warning gaze, and he wanted to shrug. Manipulation was one thing, but straight out lying to the devil himself was just about the most foolish thing a person could do. Besides, they needed him to trust them.

Lucifer threw his head back and laughed, a harsh, grating tone that sounded like a knife scraping across bone. “So it is! I’m impressed, little Q.” And of course Lucifer would have known his name, if he was cunning enough to manifest as one of James’ sorest wounds. “A transfer spell? Someone’s been playing hooky from heaven, hmm?”

“Like I said, we thought you would be interested.”

“Oh, but it gets even _better_ ,” said Lucifer, with glee. “And you have _no idea_ , do you? Poor little blind mice, running around in the dark.”

Q’s hackles rose. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

“But if they knew what they were doing…” Lucifer’s face was suddenly uncomfortably close to Q’s own. From this distance, the stench of sulfur and rotting flesh was even stronger than it had been before. From this distance, he could see the faint traces of green about the body— _Alec’s_ jawline. The skin stretched upwards like putty, revealing all of his blackened gums. He wanted to scoot back, but both the fires at his back and Lucifer’s power kept him in place, tendons straining against his binds.

“Well, I’m sure it’s all the same to you.” Q couldn’t even struggle as lips pressed against his forehead, strangely cool, as if their owner had just stepped out of a snowstorm. He felt something seared onto his forehead, pulsing once, twice, before the skin felt relatively normal again.

He might have just made the biggest mistake of his life, but the deed was done now. They had the kiss of the devil. Lucifer waved his hands, and he felt all of his muscles relax. He raised a hand to his forehead cautiously, poking at the area that Lucifer had touched, but could not feel anything strange.

“Now let’s see...the blood. All you’ll need is a blade carved from deer’s bone, and a crystal decanter. Raise the blade to the sky while a star is falling, and repeat after me.” Lucifer said a single word in Enochian, burning with intent, and Q had the curious sensation that his veins were trying to slither out of his own body. “Collect the blood in the decanter, and don’t open it until you need it; the blood will turn to stone otherwise.”

“And you’re telling us this out of the goodness of your blackened heart?” James asked, suspicious, sweeping Q behind him with a firm shove. Q wriggled furiously against him. Leave it to James Bond to play the hero, even against things that he’s powerless to fight.

Lucifer didn’t smile as his edges began to fade into the searing heat of the flames, but there was a certain, smug satisfaction in his expression. “Even the devil looks after his own. And though I have no love for you mud-crawlers…” he looked Q straight in the eyes, and Q, flustered, nearly stepped backwards into the fire. “I suspect that you and I will have much to discuss in the coming days. Looking forward to talking with you again, little brother.”

With that, the former angel was gone. But the flames and the suffocating smell of sulfur lingered, in a malevolent haze that made Q shudder in dread.


	9. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway there! Thanks to everyone who's stuck with this story through my slow, slow updates :)

“It’s a trap,” Bond snarled as they raced down the road, Q plastered in his seat by the sheer speed of the car, pushed to the engine’s limit. “He was playing us the whole time, Q. We can’t trust anything he told us. We can’t continue with this plan.”

Q touched his forehead absently. The skin no longer burned, but he could still feel the cool heat of Lucifer’s touch, as if it were branded into his very tissue. The smell of sulfur lingered on his clothes. He could feel blood at the back of his throat when he swallowed. It would be a while before he ever felt clean again.

"We don't have any options," Q said with a sigh. "The purpose of the spell remains the same. Whatever Lucifer does with the consequences isn't our concern."

"You're not concerned about the other angels at all?” Q hated that incredulous lilt of James’ voice. At that moment, he didn’t want to think about the angels at all. He wanted to forget that they existed, that he was ever one of them, and just leave this entire mess behind. Never before had he thought that he’d miss the controlled chaos of Q-branch, with too many members of upper-level management bypassing IT to ask his technicians and programmers how to reset a simple firewall. But right now, he would kill for the chance to ask M if he’d turned it on and off again.

If he felt any guilt at ignoring the obvious threat from Lucifer, he shoved it firmly out of his mind. Had they felt guilty about letting double-oh four die? About the countless atrocities they’d witnessed, knowing that they could save a life within seconds, but not choosing to lift a single appendage?

He didn’t let himself think about how he was the same, before he saw Bond. It was easier to remain righteous when he blocked out the empathy.

“No,” he replied, turning his face toward the passenger side window and leaning against the cool pane of glass. The first traces of light were just creeping across the horizon, tinting the tips of grass with shades of gold and orange, sending the countryside ablaze with amber light. It should have been beautiful, but now it reminded him too much of burning and sulfur and dead, dead smiles, so he closed his eyes.

The engine purred quietly. Q had just begun to reach that sensation of falling, of being caught between the worlds of wakefulness and dreams when James spoke again. “They’re still your family, Q.”

Sleep deprivation and stress made Q vicious in his reply. “Don’t talk to me like you know anything about family.”

He regretted the hateful words as soon as they left his mouth. James didn’t need that, especially so soon after the shock of seeing Alec again. Suddenly wide awake, he peered at James out of the corner of his eye. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” he murmured, contrite.

Aside from a subtle tensing of his jaw, James didn’t react outwardly. Remarkable restraint, considering the circumstances. “I don’t pretend to know anything about how your family worked, and I think we can safely say that I like those wankers about as much as you do.” His wry smile was more of a grimace, and Q echoed the sentiment. “But no matter how much they’ve let you down, you’ll regret it if you don’t do everything in your power to save them.”

Q resisted the urge to stare. That was as strong an allusion as Bond ever made to the past, to his personal demons. “Is…is that how you felt about them?” He asked, unsure how his question would be received.

The sun was coming up now, and light played across James’ cheekbones. He could see every faded scar, every tired wrinkle on his lover’s skin. Had he always looked so old? Or was the weight of everything he had experienced finally being made clear to Q? He didn’t want to stare, but he couldn’t look away.

“MI6 never understood,” James said, at last. “But it’s not as easy as just forgetting them when they’re gone. Alec, Vesper, all those nameless faces that came before and after…watching them die doesn’t make it any easier to bear.”

Unable to speak, Q simply reached across the space between them and placed his hand on Bond’s thigh, palm up. Not even a second later, a broad, calloused palm slipped into his own, giving it a single, reassuring squeeze. James continued to drive, and Q didn’t ask him where they were going. He simply laid his head back, shutting his eyes against the heat of the sunrise, trusting James with the journey ahead.

***

The next time Q awoke, it was to a gentle shaking on his shoulder. He frowned and nuzzled away, back into dreams of pleasant melodies and forgotten colours.

“Q. Wake up.”

Q grumbled. Couldn’t he have a break from saving the world for just five minutes? But his neck was cramping and a sheen of sweat had broken over his skin from the musty heat of the car, so he cracked one eye open, peering blearily at the landscape outside the window.

For a moment, Q thought he was hallucinating, or at the very least, back in his dream. The vibrant shade of emerald nearly blinded him, and he recoiled, hissing.

“Where...where’s my tech?” he asked, bewildered, brain not yet catching up with his mouth.

James laughed, a disconcerting, joyful sound that was at odds with Q’s confusion and vague sense of doom. “You’re adorable when you wake up in the morning, darling.”

Q had a scathing retort ready on the tip of his tongue, but a closer look at James rendered him speechless. The man had changed out of his heavy suit into a white linen shirt and a pair of lightweight shorts that left little to the imagination. He looked for all the world like a billionaire on vacation, or perhaps a champion sailor, ready for a day of lazing about his boat. Q could see the planes of his abs through the shirt, and the faint outline of his cock through the shorts. His mouth watered.

“Sex?” he demanded, still groggy and unable to form coherent sentences.

James rolled his eyes. “If I’d known you were so easily placated, I wouldn’t have bothered with the drive.” But by that time, Q’s brain was beginning to function at its normal level, and he gaped at the surreal beauty of the wonderland James had brought them to.

For all that it’s done for him, England could not hold a candle to this place in beauty. The flora was so lush he couldn’t focus on one place for too long, too used as he was to the rainy grey of downtown London. A towering waterfall roared overhead, churning out frothy swathes of foam that parted over the sharp rocks below. There were flowers everywhere, fat blossoms littering the grass like scattered gems, filling the air with subtle perfume. It was like stepping into a storybook. He didn't know what to focus on.

“What…?” he gaped, neck craned up so high that he almost fell backwards. James caught him and pressed him against his chest, and Q let himself be held, gaze darting everywhere in an effort to take in the entirety of the scene before him.

“The last few days have been shit for both of us. I figured we could take a day off and just relax. Put those wasted vacation days to some use.”

James seemed calmer than he had been last night—or was it this morning? There was an easiness to his gait that shed years off his frame. What had transpired in the car apparently had been cathartic for him, and he seemed like a younger man already.

Q smiled. In the bright light of day, things did not seem as dire as they had last night. Maybe they _could_ spare a day for just themselves. “I must say, this is much nicer than that beach in Jamaica.”

“In my defence, the locals did warn us about jellyfish stings,” James said with a shudder. Q shared that sentiment. The excruciating sting was on par with torture of the worst calibre. And what James had to do to relieve the pain—well, no one said the mystery of a relationship could last forever.

"No tourists?" Q asked, kicking his shoes off and burying his toes in the long grass. An untouched woodland like this one was rare to find, and he had expected at least the shadow of a group of hikers by now. Humans and their enterprising spirit.

James shook his head. "Not many people know about this place. I found it when I came exploring here as a teenager. Haven't seen a single other person in all that time."

“More for us.” He took James’ hand and after sharing a conspiratorial look, they went sprinting towards the waterfall like a pair of schoolboys. The small rocks on the shore bit into his feet, and Q yelped, doing a strange hop-dance that just made James laugh harder. Q tried to stop before they reached the water, wanting to take the opportunity to shed his clothes, but James simply leapt in, towing Q behind him. The cold water was bracing, and so clear that Q could open his eyes underwater and see straight to the bottom. He came up spluttering for air, James smugly unrepentant and treading water beside him.

“You insufferable arse!” he gasped, brushing his wet bangs out of his eyes. Something about the water felt pure, dissolving the memory of Lucifer’s touch from his skin. He dove underwater again, letting the cool water cradle him from all sides, washing all the grime from the previous night out to sea.

Playfulness overtook him, and he grabbed at James’ legs from underwater. The man flailed in utterly uncharacteristic clumsiness and sunk like a stone. His expression was unamused as he drifted gently to the bottom, raising an eyebrow as Q waved at him, limbs slow and movement exaggerated.

They broke for air together, James spitting out water in a long, graceful arc reminiscent of a dolphin. Q whistled, the piercing sound getting nearly drowned out under the waterfall’s loud rumble.

“For a former angel, you’re very juvenile,” James teased.

Reinforcing the point, Q splashed water in the other man’s eyes. “I told you, I’m technically four.”

“So I was really overestimating you when I said you had spots.” To Q’s delight, James splashed him back, and the relaxed banter dissolved into an enthusiastic water fight, the kind of which could only be matched by a pair of very energetic toddlers.

***

“Bill Tanner?”

“Oh, Ernie. Definitely Ernie. He’s one bad tan away from changing his address to Sesame Street.”

“You’re kidding!” Q laughed so hard that he nearly sunk. They were floating lazily in the water, holding hands so that the current would not wash them away from each other. Q had long shed his clothes, the crisp bite of lake water caressing every bit of his skin like a familiar lover. It was late afternoon, judging from the angle of the sun, and Q was feeling so relaxed and warm that he was in serious danger of nodding off.

“No, not at all. M would make a good Bert, don’t you think? He’s got the build and the attitude for it.” If someone from MI6 was to come across their conversation, M would have them court martialed. But thoughts of M with those thick eyebrows and lumpy nose set Q off again. He couldn’t remember the last time he laughed this long and hard.

“Mm, I wonder how MI6 is doing right now,” Q mused idly. They hadn’t been gone for long, and besides, they had a good reason to take off like they did, but Q missed the order and efficiency of his branch. There was talking of fitting out a car with flamethrowers at the end of the month if they went under budget, and everyone had been excited about it.

He sighed. If they could get this mess with the angels sorted out soon, he would be back in time to watch the project being implemented. Otherwise, that would be just another thing that the war had cost him.

“The same as always, I’d assume. People to kill, information to steal, national figureheads to placate.” James sounded remarkably unconcerned. Then again, this was also the man who tended to disappear for months after bad missions, so perhaps his attitude towards MI6 was simply much more laissez-faire than Q’s.

“We should do this more often,” Q said with a yawn, letting the sun warm his eyelids. He had long since shed his clothes, looking forward to getting a tan after spending most of his human life in an ammunitions lab. “Not the making-deals-with-the-devil part, obviously, but this. I had fun today.”

“When this is all over, I’ll take you to Iceland,” James promised. “You’ll love it. The skies are beautiful at night, and the hot springs have so much steam you’ll believe you’re bathing in a cloud. No planes, either. I’ll rent a boat, and we’ll sail on the Atlantic for as long as it takes to get there.”

Q smiled. “I’ll hold you to that.” He didn’t speak again, the deep rumble of James’ promises lulling him to sleep.


	10. Chapter 9

A library was the last place that Q had expected to find himself in the company of James Bond. The mythology section of the library, even more so. Yet there they were, commandeering an entire conference table, James’ glare enough to warn off anyone foolhardy enough to approach the duo.

They’d agreed to spend some time researching the Metatron’s spell before searching for a fallen star. Q had been excited about the prospect of regrouping through knowledge. Besting their opponents in wit what they couldn’t do in power. It was his domain, after all. But what Q didn’t know was that he had greatly overestimated human knowledge of the divine.

The Cherubim certainly did _not_ resemble chubby infants. And last he checked, Michael’s wings were not so...fluffy. And he was supposed to trust this propaganda?

James was currently flipping through a book entitled “Revelations of the Christian Spirit”, which sounded about as promising as the last five titles they’d flipped through. That was: not at all. Fed up, Q slammed his book shut.

“Bond, what are we doing here?” he hissed, mindful of keeping his voice down. He’d already been glared at once by the sullen librarian at the counter for throwing a book down with too much force. “These are grossly misrepresented at best, and about as accurate as fairy tales. We’re wasting our time.”

“You’re not looking at the right books,” said Bond, remarkably patient for someone who’d once blown up an entire embassy because he was tired of waiting for the mark to come out. “Besides, we have no other leads. You yourself admitted it.”

A gaggle of teenage girls, all clad in the same school uniforms, paraded past like a progression of ducklings, and Q fell silent as he waited for them to pass. One girl bumped into him, muttering an apology as he looked up. She must’ve been shy, because she ducked her head until her bangs fell into her face, and hurried past them without another glance. Bond watched the girls with studied disinterest, radiating danger like a wolf in a flock of sheep. Despite his handsome looks, no one dared venture within a meter of him.

Q rolled his eyes when the girls were safely out of earshot. “A rather pointless display, don’t you think?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Bond replied, smooth as butter.

“Right.” He wasn’t even put out. James wielded his charm and danger like a double-edged sword, and like any good weapon, he honed it as often as possible. Pulling his phone out, Q scrolled to the world news, searching for signs of angels while James went back to his book. Ah, technology. Such a convenient, powerful device at his fingertips, and James wanted to nose around in a pile of mildewed books. A relic, indeed.

“These are gross caricatures of the Oxiaial and Alonusahi,” Q hissed a while later, eyes caught unwillingly by a passage in the latest atrocity before him. His fingers twitched with the urge to tear out the offending pages. “Tzaphkiel would set fire to every publishing house on the continent if he were to find out about this.”

“Oxy—what?” James tilted his head.

Glad for an excuse to put his book down, Q explained. “Angel hierarchies. Err, Oxiaial translates roughly to throne, and Alonusahi to power. There are others, but—"

“Give us some examples,” James demanded, and Q paused, searching for the human equivalents of names he’d only spoken in heaven.

“The Powers are pure beams of light. Wouldn’t hold a candle to Lucifer, of course, but we call them the shining ones. Virtues are essentially Powers without a sense of humour. I liked the Dominions, though. Billions of eyes on their wings. Some of the others found them creepy, but they’ve always got great stories about the nations they watch over. Then you’ve got the Thrones. Great big rings of fire, intersecting infinitely in infinite dimensions. Great fun at a party, not that we’ve had parties in heaven for centuries. Cherubim—they’re what you refer to as dark matter, I believe?”

“You’re kidding.” James’ mouth was open, and he looked utterly rapt, like he was a boy listening to a brand new bedtime story. His enthusiasm delighted Q, whose joy at being able to talk openly about his former family was still tempered by betrayal and wistful nostalgia. “Which one of those are you?”

“I’m a Seraphim. The highest order, next to the Archangels.” Q preened, and if he still had his wings, he would have extended them in a full display of his power. “A Grigori, to be precise. The Watcher of the Universe.” And, to be fair, that was hardly something to be proud of, considering it was the reason they were in this mess in the first place. But then again, he wasn’t about to go into the gory details.

“And you’ve got tentacles,” James smirked.

It was only the watchful glare of the librarian that kept Q from shrieking in indignation.

In the end, they left the library with an armful of books each and strained, tired eyes. They could find a Travelodge for the night and continue researching until the library opened again. Q opened his mouth wide in a yawn, uncaring of the dirty look the librarian shot at his back. All he wanted at the moment was a nice long shower and a soft mattress.

“Q, hold on a second.” James’ tone, low and serious, sent a jolt of unpleasant adrenaline through his veins. He paused with his hand on the front door, then leaned down, pretending to retie his shoelaces.

“Two shadows in the alleyway next to the Aston.” Q tilted his head to the left a fraction of a degree, and looked towards the road where James pointed discreetly. Sure enough, two dark shapes jutted out of the alley, too far away for him to get any sense of their size or lethality, but clearly human-shaped, and clearly not wishing to be seen.

James pulled him back into the library, dropping their books at the entrance, and the librarian at the front counter scowled. “Sorry, we’re closing.”

“We’ll just be a second. My friend here needs the loo.” The smile James shot the woman was pure charm, wide and beaming, a false twinkle of good humour in his eyes. It was astonishing, really, the degree to which this man could manipulate his expressions. Q fixed a contrite look on his own face, trying to look sheepish and desperate. He suspected he just looked constipated.

Fortunately for him, the librarian had only eyes for Bond. “Well...alright, five minutes,” she blushed, pinched mouth softening a degree. Bond winked at her, pulling Q into the men’s without another word.

The charming mask dropped as the door swung shut behind them, instantly turning grim. “We’ll climb out through the window and try to catch a glimpse of them from the next door rooftop.” He nodded at a flimsy-looking ladder, barely visible through the filthy panes of the small washroom window. “No weapons?”

Q shook his head. They hadn’t expected to be followed to a _library_ of all places—even James’ trusty Walther was still in the car. James cast his gaze about the narrow space before landing on the tissue dispenser. The metal box made a loud _crack_ as it came off the wall, leaving small holes in the plaster, and Q flinched. What if the librarian came to investigate?

“It’ll be fine,” James promised, ripping the serrated edge from the dispenser and wrapping it around a toilet paper holder he’d liberated from a nearby stall. As weapons went, the homemade shank was crude, but James had a facility with improvisation that made the jagged metal seem much more menacing than it actually was.

“Wait.” Q motioned for the weapon. James handed it to him, and before he could protest, Q drove it into his own forearm.

The sharp pain was bracing. Bond made a shocked noise and moved towards him, but Q stopped him in his tracks with the strongest glare he’d learned in his years of babysitting reckless agents. Blood was already dripping down his arm. He gathered up a few drops with the tip of his index finger and drew the strongest symbol of destruction he could on the rusted metal. “There,” he said with satisfaction. “I put a sigil on it. It’s not much, but it’s a bit more effective than a small bit of metal.”

“My brilliant quartermaster.” James was already inspecting his arm, dabbing it with a wad of wet paper towels. “I do hope your tetanus shots are up to date.” Q struggled not to laugh. Count on double-oh seven to sound like an over-protective mother hen even when they were being followed by unknown enemies.

Not that a piece of metal would be much use against an army of angels. Fuck. Q would have to design some more discreet weapons when he got the chance. Perhaps there was something to that exploding pen idea after all.

“Alright, gimme a boost,” Q grunted, staring up at the small, grimy window in dismay. He wasn’t built for fieldwork, despite his recent, unfortunate tendency to run into trouble on a James Bond-esque level. His knees felt weak, like they would either give out at a moment’s notice or launch him far, far away from his present location. All this—this climbing, sneaking around, _spying_ , well, it was no wonder he hadn’t infiltrated MI6 as an agent.

James lifted him up, giving him a small kiss on the ear as encouragement. The intimate contact warmed him, and with renewed determination, Q gripped the narrow ledge with the tips of his fingers. He could feel the sticky layer of dust clinging to his skin, making him slip millimeter by millimeter. He gritted his teeth and heaved, muscles straining with the effort of lifting himself up.

“I’m gonna fall!” he grunted out, panicked and scrabbling for purchase. James lifted him higher, steadying his feet, and with a little more cursing and panting, Q was able to undo the latch on the window. He wriggled fiercely, trying to shove himself out the small opening. He was so high up now that James could no longer support his legs, and he was forced to skid spider-like on the wall, trainers luckily giving him the grip needed to climb upwards, bit by bit.

“I have to admit, I’m getting a remarkably nice view from here,” James drawled, and Q flushed bright red. He could only imagine what he looked like, arse waving in the air like some sort of pervert’s flag. One more item on his "things to do after the angels are out of his hair forever" list: fill Bond’s car with bubble solution.

With one final, desperate push, he fell through the window and tumbled ignominiously to the ground with a pained groan, hitting his elbow in the process. His shirt was ruined, cut on the sharp window frame and covered in dirt and dust. When he brushed a hand through his hair, he could feel something slimy on his fingertips. He was fairly sure that none of his agents had ever been so undignified on their missions.

"Clear!" Q shouted, moving aside while trying vainly to clean himself up. At this rate, his wardrobe was going to degenerate into nothingness within a week.

As if to add insult to injury, James slicked through the window like a cat, twisting his limbs with acrobatic grace. He even landed on his feet, brushing nonexistent dust off the lapel of his jacket. It didn’t seem fair; Q used to have enough power to flatten a continent. A mere window should not have defeated him so easily.

“Need a hand?” James offered, keeping a remarkably straight face as he looked down at his disheveled boyfriend.

“Show-off.” Q stalked off, staying in the shadows and taking care not to knock over any stray trashcans. The town was unsettlingly quiet after dark, so unlike the bustle of downtown London. He found himself wishing for pedestrians, even the rude ones that shoved you in the streets and refused to pick up after their dogs. Anything that would drown out the sound of his own loud breathing.

He approached the rusty ladder, giving it a good shake. Aside from a few red-brown flakes, nothing broke away, and Q was almost disappointed. But to be honest, if the ladder broke James would probably make them climb the building with bare hands.

“After you?” Q gestured, hopefully.

James stared incredulously. “Q, if the ladder breaks, I’ll crush you. Whereas if you go first, one good gust of wind might just blow you up onto the roof.” He poked at Q’s ribs in emphasis.

“You just want to stare at my arse again,” Q sighed, muttering indignantly to himself as he stepped onto the narrow rung. He could smell the rust from where he stood. Metallic and sharp, like freshly spilled blood. When he stopped to examine one hand, it was caked with dark stains. A few of the rungs were corroded in the middle, and he had to waddle awkward up the sides like a deranged duck.

Halfway up the ladder, Q made the mistake of looking down, and immediately wished he hadn’t. A brisk breeze shook the metal, making his knees lock up. It was one thing to watch his agents scale buildings from the comfort of a computer monitor in an air-conditioned room, another to stand up there and realise how little stood between him and death.

Moments like this, he felt starkly the weakness of his human body, the soft flesh and brittle bones. Bend him in half and he’d snap like a twig. Frightening, to be confronted with one’s own mortality. Even more so for a formerly immortal creature.

"Focus, Q." James' reassuring voice broke through his stupor. "You're almost there. Don't look down."

_Easy for you to say_ , Q thought with vicious desperation. He took a few deep breaths to settle himself, before reaching upwards again. The metal scent made him gag. He wondered if that was what it would smell like if he slipped and his head bashed open against the sidewalk.

He had a miniature heart attack when he reached forward and his hand closed around air. But that was soon replaced with stark relief as he realised that that was it. He had reached the top. He scrambled onto solid ground with trembling arms, half-tempted to kiss the floor before him.

Maybe it wasn’t just planes. Maybe it was simply the sensation of being suspended in mid-air. It felt too much like falling.

Moments later, James joined him, and Q tried to pull himself together, ashamed of his weakness. Q wasn’t sure what he saw on his face, but he took Q’s hands in between his own and cupped them with atypical gentleness. Broad fingers stroked across his palms, brushing away lines of rust. Q could feel the intense eyes drilling into his head, but he looked away.

Clearly, Bond wasn’t going to stand for that, because a second later Q was enveloped in a bone-crushing hug. He snuffled into Bond’s shoulder. Angels shouldn’t be like this, trembling like a leaf because of a measly ladder. At the moment, he didn’t feel like the Seraphim who’d torn out his own wings and faced down Lucifer. 

“You’re okay, Q. You’re okay.” Bond’s breath was warm against his ear.

_Poor, foolish little angel,_ Lucifer’s voice sang in his head. He shoved it away, viciously, concentrating on James’ whispered platitudes instead.

There was no time for weakness; the threat was still out there, and they had to keep moving. Q glanced up at Bond, grateful to see no trace of pity in his eyes, and nodded. Bond nodded back, accepting the moment for what it was. They crept forward, keeping to the shadows cast by the edges, moving on bent knees.

At a signal from Bond, Q stopped. He crouched down while Bond peeked over the edge carefully, at an angle that kept his face in shadow and that would be nearly impossible to see from the street. Bond scanned the alley below what seemed like hours while Q’s heart pounded in his throat.

With a frown, James crouched beside him. “They’re gone,” he breathed, in the faintest trace of a whisper.

Q peeked out. Nothing, just the dirty glow of the streetlight and peeling graffiti.

“The car?” he asked, unwilling to poke his head up too high.

James shook his head. “Still there. Maybe we were just being overcautious…”

“Or maybe,” a light voice called from the shadows. A blinding stream of light fell on them, and Q averted his face, covering his watering eyes with the crook of his elbow. “Maybe we were _here_ all along.”


	11. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dammit, so sorry for the long wait! I was sick, then I was catching up on all the work I missed while I was sick, and before I knew it January was already over. My sincerest apologies to everyone, I promise I'll be faster with the next chapter D:

James lunged forward with his homemade weapon, but the figure sidestepped his vicious swipe with nothing more than a pained hiss as the edge of the blade caught on its skin. Bond, caught off-balance, spun to keep the stranger in his line of vision. Moving so fast that they were only a pale blur in the moonlight, the figure snatched the blade out of Bond’s hands, shoving him away effortlessly. Q could only stand there, helpless as the deadly dance ended in a tense stand-off. Horrifyingly, Q saw even more movement from the corner of his eyes. Angels streamed like ghosts from all four corners, ethereal in the smooth glide of their movements. Q squinted through the light bursts in his vision. It didn’t matter what vessels these angels took, but he wanted at least to look the threat in the eyes.

“What a clever design,” the leader of the angels murmured, examining its injured hand as it handed the shank to another figure. Then its attention turned to Q.

“So nice to see you again, Qaphsiel. Or rather, I hear it’s Q now? And a pleasure to meet you, James Bond.” He could see long hair, drawn up into two bunches. The ruffled flare of a skirt. The ensemble seemed familiar, and he frowned, the ensemble striking a chord within his memory.

“You!” Q gasped. They were the group of schoolgirls who had bumped into him in the library. With growing dread, he remembered how many of them were there. Ten, maybe more? How could they hope to fight an entire regiment?

“We come in peace,” said the angel.

Q glared distrustfully, but to his surprise, James snickered. Q widened his eyes in a look that he hoped communicated “please don’t piss off the divine killing machines” instead of “you’re so hot when you’re being reckless, take me now.”

“What is so funny?” Pigtails demanded. Nothing about her was shy now. Her head was thrown back and her spine straight, staring down at the duo like a scowling commander. Yet Q didn’t recognize the spark of her grace. Still, judging from her confident demeanor, like she was used to having others kowtow before her, Q got the uncomfortable feeling that she wasn’t exactly the guardian angel sort.

“We come in peace?” James snorted. “Are you planning on taking us back to your flying saucer, sticking some probes in our brains?”

Had James hit his head? Q tilted his head to one side, an action that was mirrored by the battalion of girls around him. The synchronized movement only sent James into further hysterics, and despite the threat around them, Q felt a bubble of laughter rising inside him as well. Maybe it was just the stress of the nerve-wracking climb up the ladder. Or maybe he had faced enough near-death situations by now that he just couldn’t be buggered to care anymore.

“Enough!” the angel cried. Power echoed around that single word, sending shockwaves into the air. Q fell silent immediately, reassessing the threat. He hoped that James wasn’t enough of a dinosaur to underestimate these angels because of the vessels they wore. It would be just his luck for James to make a snide remark about age and competency, and get blasted into a pile of ashes for impertinence.

But James didn’t speak again, and the angel continued, satisfied with the force of her command. “I don’t know what these saucers and probes are that you speak of, but we’ve sought your audience for a long time now.”

An angel that spoke in contractions. Interesting. Meaning that at the very least, she’d studied casual vernacular long enough to pass for human at first glance. She might have learned the words in heaven, but considering how long it took Q to grasp the nuances of English slang, it was far more likely that she’s already spent a considerable amount of time with humans. Q didn’t know if that was reassuring, or if that made her more of a threat.

“Are you going to drag us halfway across the world again?” Q asked. “Because I have to say, I wasn’t too pleased with the last angels that tried it. And to be quite honest, neither were they.”

“No,” said the angel. “This is not a kidnapping. You are _invited_ to our home.” Her tone made it sound like more of an order than an invitation.

“That’s not a euphemism for heaven, I hope,” said James, still defiant even whilst disarmed and hopelessly outnumbered.

The angel furrowed her brow. “Heaven? No, we’re going to our flat.”

 

***

 

It seemed that by “flat”, the angel really did mean a flat. Q had been half-expecting a warehouse of the sort that Samael and Adriel had brought James. Well, either that or a graveyard, but they stopped at a small bungalow a ways out of town, dug into the hills.

The way in which they had arrived confused Q as well. The angels were clearly powerful, so it should’ve been no trouble at all for them to simply zap him and James away. Instead, they piled into a bright yellow school bus. Judging from the candy wrappers and assorted collection of weapons littered everywhere, it seemed like the angels had been using this bus as transport for a while already.

Since when did angels use human transportation? Since when did they know how to _drive?_ Since when did they act like the vessels they wore? These angels were nothing like the ones Q had encountered thus far, and it unsettled him.

The interior of the bungalow was sparsely but oddly decorated, white walls broken up by various knickknacks that Q had not thought would belong on a wall. A mounted notebook. Small coins glued onto a wooden frame. Cutlery hung from rope like a madman’s noose. The angels moved around the small space with ease, chattering quietly amongst themselves while Q and James stood awkwardly at the entryway.

Even Q’s brain, working on overdrive, could not make sense of the strangeness of the scene.

“May I offer you a beverage?” one of the angels asked politely. Not the leader; this one had distinctly East Asian features, and her pleated school skirt was tattered at the edges. Her grace flickered, and something about its movement seemed familiar to Q.

“No thanks. Haniel, right?”

She beamed, pleased to be recognized. “It’s Hannah, now.”

Before Q could question her further, Hannah turned to James. “And you?”

James shrugged. “A beer would be nice.”

She nodded, moving away, and Q shot James a vicious glare. “Are you _trying_ to end up poisoned?” he hissed.

“I don’t think they want to kill us,” James whispered, pulling Q down onto an overstuffed couch. Q sank into the cushions, feet flailing before regaining his balance. “Look around. None of them are paying us any attention. I think they just want to talk.”

“The same way that Samael and Adriel just wanted to talk? The same way we just needed a simple favour from Lucifer?” Q ground out through gritted teeth. But in a corner of his mind, he suspected that James was right. Save for that initial flash of shock on the roof, none of the angels had tried to threaten them in any way.

If anything, this group reminded him of himself, when he first fell.

And with that realisation, he understood.

They didn’t want to kill him. They didn’t want to punish him for beginning a war he had no idea would happen. These were the renegade angels that the Metatron had been worried about. The ones who’d seized the opportunity to break millennia of tradition and walk on Earth once more. And of course they knew how to drive, and how to talk without raising eyebrows, and even how to buy a house. They had to learn if they wanted to live down here on Earth.

“You’re right,” Q breathed out, staring at James with wide eyes. “These angels— they’re _glad_ the war is happening.”

“I’m impressed. You are every bit as clever as they’ve warned us about.” In the intensity of his revelation, Q had not heard the angel arrive, but it was the leader again. She didn’t seem angry that Q had guessed their intentions. If anything, there was a bit of pride gleaming in her eyes.

“Then you’ll understand why we can’t help you.” James.

The angel sighed, flopping onto an armoire in a move that was just a tad too stiff to pass for natural. “How much has Q told you about angels?”

Her tone made Q bristle. He resented the implication in her words, that he had withheld information from James for his own gains. To be fair, he had kept the secret of his existence from his lover for several years, but that was in the past now. He had shown James the truth of his past, and in turn, James had shared his own history with Q. There was to be no more secret between them, no more barriers. A clean slate for both of them.

“James knows everything that I know,” he said simply.

“Have you told him that not all of us are murderous bureaucrats?” The angel asked, disbelieving. “Or, perhaps _you_ have forgotten that yourself.”

“I remember enough.” The apathy of the others, their self-assured smugness about the inferiority of the humans they were supposed to watch over. The fiery pain on his back where his wings once spread wide.

“If I may interject,” said Bond. “And excuse my choice of words, but I rarely find sympathy for the devil helpful in my line of work.”

The beer that Hannah had brought without notice grew wet with perspiration as it was ignored, leaving rings of water on the hardwood table. Q could practically taste the tension in the air, thick and bitter. He still didn’t know anything about this angel, but every movement she made spoke of power and confidence. He had no illusions that she would not hesitate to strike him down if she didn’t get her way.

“The group that you see here is...I believe you would say, ‘a drop in the ocean?’ There are many more like us. Enough to suppress those who would take advantage of this weakness.”

“And who _are_ you?” Q asked, nudging closer to James. One night, just before falling asleep, James had asked him if angels were able to read minds. Q’d responded with a tart “If we were, I would’ve been able to save half the world’s monuments from ruin at your hands.” It was all in jest; Q considered mind reading a gross violation of privacy. But he wished for the ability now, to ask James what he thought. His partner was always much better at reading people than he was.

Instead of answering immediately, the angel turned to James. “Who do you think I am?”

James’ surprise wasn’t apparent, but Q knew him well enough to catch the brief widening of his eyes. “I’ve never been one for religion, but Q explained the angels ranks the other day. You’ve taken vessels that are easily underestimated. You have a wide circle of followers, yet none of them are in this room at the moment. No point in making a show of power when you’re certain of your strength. Q’s never met you before, either. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say…”

“Archangel,” Q finished in a whisper, sudden chills crawling down his spine. “But everyone in heaven knows what Michael’s grace looks like, and these days, Gabriel is just as elusive as God. So you’re—”

“The Archangel Raphael, at your service.” She nodded at James. “You’re very perceptive. I can see why Q likes you.”

“I can think of a few other reasons,” Bond winked, shit eating grin plastered across his face.

“ _Now is not the time,_ ” Q hissed. Absurdly, both Bond and Raphael chuckled.

Melting in like morning mist, Hannah appeared next to the couch. She leaned down and whispered a few words into James’ ear, who, after a brief glance at Q, followed after her. Q looked after them questioningly, but Bond’s poker face was as impenetrable as always.

“Oh, for…” Q groaned. “Don’t get smited!” he shouted after their retreating figures.

“I shall endeavor to do my best,” James replied, giving a cocky salute.

Raphael watched the exchange with mild eyes. “You’re in love with him,” she said with complete certainty, as soon as James was out of earshot.

Heat blossomed in Q’s cheeks. "Strange thing to fixate on, at the end of the world."

“Merely an observation. You scold him like a disobedient fledgling, but your attachment to him goes beyond simple affection.”

“That doesn’t mean—” They’d never said those words to each other before. Q’s never even thought of it, until this moment. Love had always seemed to him an elusive concept that existed only in children’s books and blockbuster movies. He knew of its existence, but he’d always imagined there to be a disconnect between himself and James and _love_ , like they were on opposite sides of a mirrored wall.

But really, what else could it be? Sure, maybe he hadn’t loved James this whole time, but —

The way his hard eyes became liquid whenever they fixed upon Q.

The way he took care of Q for two whole weeks back in December when he was out with the flu, wiping away snot and sweat with a patience that would’ve shocked Q if he’d had the presence of mind to feel anything but misery.

The way Q’s ears roared with ocean waves when James leaned in for a stolen kiss under the weak light of his office.

And Q thought back to the aching feeling in his chest whenever James was away. Was that what love was? Was it always so painful?

Raphael was still waiting for a response to her question. Flustered, Q changed the subject. An Archangel who could destroy him without batting an eye was absolutely not the person he wanted to discuss his relationship with. “Let’s not get distracted. So, you’re Raphael. That doesn’t change my response.”

“But look around you!” she cried, suddenly passionate. “We don’t wish for the destruction of humanity. We _like_ humanity. It’s why we brought you here, to show you that there are many of us who see this as an opportunity. We seek to understand their culture, contribute to it, even. Surely you of all people could understand that?”

And Q did. God knows he’d felt that same strange, wild yearning when he saw the towers they’d built, glittering in the night air like beacons, calling him home.  On a more rational level, he didn't trust the Metatron, didn't trust its assurance that completing the spell with bring an end to the angel war. He didn't trust Lucifer either—any interest the Underworld took in his affairs was a fair indication that affairs were not exactly above board. Surely a renegade Archangel and her cohort of chocolate-eating, skirt-wearing minions were the better choice to align himself with?

But, no. He couldn't. Archangel or not, Raphael couldn't know about the collapse of the world. If Q didn't go through with the spell, everything would be destroyed.

“It’s too dangerous,” he said, shaking his head. “You and your followers may wish for peace, but there are many others who would take advantage of the chaos to wreak havoc. Remember Samael? Remember the others like him, who would love nothing more than to watch the world burn? We’re warriors. Destruction is in our nature.”

“That’s not true, and you of all angels should know that, Watcher.” Raphael shook her head, agitated. “I do not understand why you refuse to accept the truth. You were the first to rebel against the antiquated traditions of heaven, the herald of this new era. Why will you not help us?”

“There are bigger concerns than the bureaucrats up in heaven,” said Q, carefully.

“You are a liar and a coward,” Raphael spat, cheeks reddening. “You care nothing for the welfare of the angelic race, you _traitor._ You would not care if the whole of us burned if it meant your precious humans could live in blissful ignorance.”

Q winced, the words hitting painfully close to home. “It’s more complicated than that. I’m sorry, I can’t explain any more.” He stood up. “We’re going to leave now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“ _You will do no such thing.”_

The timbre of her voice changed, grew into something more metallic and less human. Her eyes were blank, and her face as smooth and emotionless as if she’d only taken her vessel seconds ago. Q gulped, the threat of danger hitting him too late.

 “Q? What is it?” James came through the kitchen door, looking none the worse for wear after his rendezvous with Hannah. Q was about to shout out a warning, but Raphael turned towards James, her eyes gleaming.

_What the wicked fears will come upon him, But the desire of the righteous will be granted._ Raphael spoke from every direction at once, voice shaking the walls of the house. Q jumped as framed knickknacks fell to the ground and shattered, a tableau of violence surreal in its suddenness.

“She’s losing control,” breathed Hannah, eyes glowing white in pre-emptive defence. “Go, go, get out of here. She won’t last much longer—”

“Q!” James shouted, reaching toward him at the same moment that Raphael’s gaze fell upon him.

_The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth._ Her hand twitched, the skin cracking under the strain of light, and Q had only seconds to react.

_I’m sorry_ , he thought, diving in front of James. There was a bright flash, a blinding bolt of pain, and then blessed, empty darkness.


	12. Chapter 11

Someone was screaming. Q would've suspected it was him, except he actually felt. Well. Fine.

Fine, save for the killer migraine. A migraine that wasn't being helped any by all of the _screaming_.

He peeked one eye open, cautious. He half-expected Raphael’s flaming figure before him, her hungry smile the last thing he’d see before sudden oblivion. Instead, there was only the sky, pink with the inevitability of sunrise.

Shit, how long had he been out? The ground around was blackened and flattened, half of the house missing completely. It looked like a hurricane had passed through, or maybe a wildfire. He spared a moment to be thankful that the angels didn’t have any neighbours. Destruction of this size would’ve rendered them as incorporeal as shadows before they realised what was happening.

James. Where was James? Q raised a hand to his forehead. A searing heat blistered his fingers, and he whipped his hand back, yelping. There was a symbol burned onto his skin, glowing angrily. He remembered dead eyes and the stench of rot and cold, dead lips pressed to his skin. Lucifer. There must’ve been a protection spell woven into the kiss. Or maybe that was just him thinking optimistically, and he had meant to turn Q into a walking time bomb.

_Yolcam drilp_ , Q swore to himself, letting the guttural syllables pour off his tongue. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

If he caused this destruction—if there was blood on his hands—hot bile rose in his throat. He could see figures buried under the rubble. Raphael and her followers should be fine, with their grace keeping them safe. Not that he had any prayers to spare for their well-being at the moment. But James. James James James what if Q killed him? He was standing right in the way of the blast…

Pieces of mortar shifted behind him. Q spun around, arms raising into a defensive position that would protect his stomach and abdomen.

A tanned arm sifted out of the rubble. Too tan, and much too slender to be Bond. Q watched the figure climb out with calm acceptance, awareness already drifting towards the rest of the wreckage. He wasn’t scared anymore. There was nothing they could do to him now.

“Ow, my head,” the figure groaned. She was caked in dust and dirt, but Q recognized Hannah’s dark hair. The formerly shiny strands were matted and tangled with debris.

“Stay the fuck away from me,” he said, voice low. He saw Hannah flinch, and felt no regret for his harsh tone. There was no other movement in the wreckage. Surely she couldn’t be the only one who survived?

Collapsing buildings could concuss a person, making them vulnerable to the shifting movements of the fallen stone. Dust could worm its way into the delicate folds of the lungs. Every second he wasted was another second closer to death for James.

“Q, please, Raphael didn’t try to hurt you intentionally,” Hannah pleaded, taking a step towards him.

“I don’t care,” he spat. This was the reason he’d not trusted her. The volatility, the newness of her emotions. Like a smoking cigarette laced with nitroglycerin. It only cemented what he'd known about angels all along, that their sheer power alone made them too much of a liability to be allowed around humans.

"Q, won't you please—"

Instantly cautious, Q spun around to meet her head on, pulling off his spectacles to confront her, angel to angel. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do. Waste the last remnants of his grace and turn her into a duck. Curse her and everyone in Raphael’s little rebel group. Maybe just leap at her and claw her eyes out. But then he took a real look at her.

“Your grace…” he gasped, putting his glasses on, just to make sure that there was no difference.

Hannah paused as well, confused. Q saw her reach inside herself for that invisible thread of power, confident movements faltering as she cast about, trying to find a handgrip. Her face turned red with exertion as she shook, trembling with a power that was no longer there. Despite his rage, Q’s stomached flipped to see the terror in her eyes.

“It’s all gone,” she said softly, in a fragile, lost sort of way. “Every last bit. For all of us.”

“I’m sorry,” replied Q, not knowing what to say. He’s never taken a vessel before, but even to go from that to being completely powerless…

Hannah shook her head. “This is...not what I had imagined when I joined Raphael’s cause.” And even Q could not remain heartless in the face of her despair. Angels were made to be soldiers, to follow and maintain order. Hannah had only had the best of intentions. They all did, in one way or another.

“What will you do now?”

She smiled at Q, the corners of her mouth taut with pain. “I still believe in her, Q. Just like you believe in your course. Do what you need to do, but even without our powers, we will continue to fight for heaven.”

“I’ll see you down in the trenches,” Q smiled. The pair nodded at each other, the way two opposing generals would in times of war. Despite her choice of loyalty, she was the only angel Q had met so far who Q genuinely respected. Not feared, not in fear of. Just respect. He found himself in awe of the way she held herself together, after being dealt such a terrible blow.

As Hannah searched for her own companions, Q returned to his own search. It was nerve-wracking work, especially under the wan glow of the rising sun. Every shadow seemed to contain ghosts, every sound a death-rattle. Maybe he should’ve waited until morning, when shapes would carry with them the suggestion of solutions rather than threats. But he didn’t have that long.

A faint tapping caught his attention. At first, Q dismissed it as wind knocking pieces of tiles together, but it was rhythmic. Barely there, but steady. “James, is that you?” he shouted. In the distance, Hannah turned to look at him.

The tapping grew louder.

All caution to the wind, Q dove upon the debris. His fingers felt raw, his muscles weak, as he tossed chunks of rock and tile out of the way. When his fingers closed around a familiar piece of grey cloth, he could have sobbed. He brushed dust away, revealing a bloody face and a mouth that gasped for air. Lazarus rising.

“Score another point for resurrection,” Q gasped, cupping his face with reverent hands. James didn’t open his eyes, but a corner of his mouth twitched.

***

Sitting in a cheap folding chair, Q could understand why Bond despised Medical so much. Everything, from the chipping grey paint to the pervasive scent of disinfectant, rang with hollowness. A sterility that did not quite smell of death, but not quite like life either. Maybe that was the point, to create the illusion of being in-between worlds, to pretend the line between life and death was really so thin.

The little hospital had taken James in without a question when Q showed them their MI6 IDs. He was expecting an irate call from M any minute now, but James was okay. He had a concussion and a fractured wrist. Small fry, considering the way some of his missions have turned out in the past. However, Q couldn’t help the guilty toil of his stomach, telling him that it was his fault his fault his fault.

He was tired of being treated like a pawn by everyone. Metatron, Lucifer, Raphael, all the different factions who sought to turn him into a weapon for their own purposes. Well, enough was enough. Q was nobody’s weapon. As soon as James recovers, he was going to take the fight to them.

(How, he had no idea yet, but muddling through missions one day at a time hasn’t killed James yet, and that was good enough for him.)

Right on schedule, his phone rang. Miraculously, it had survived the explosion fully intact, save for a hairline crack on the screen.

“I can explain,” he sighed into the speaker, stepping out into the hallway so as not to disturb James’ rest. A nurse sidestepped him, maneuvering her trolley out of his way, and he winced in apology.

“You could, but I suspect I wouldn’t like the answer.”

“Tanner?” Q whispered, with no small amount of relief. “I thought you were M, ready to take a chunk out of my arse.”

“He would, if he knew about this. Fortunately for you, he’s been stuck in meetings all day with the Swiss PM.”

Thank God for that. “We’re...in a bit of a mess,” Q admitted. Tanner had proven himself a loyal friend during the Skyfall mission, and right now, Q could use all the friends he’s got.

“Do you need me to send a team in? Strictly off the record, of course. Double-oh two’s on enforced leave and could use a nice firefight.” No unnecessary fretting, no doubt over the severity of their situation. Tanner was a model Intelligence officer, despite the illicit nature of Q’s request.

Q didn’t need an uninformed team coming in; he and Bond had enough trouble keeping themselves alive as it was. But there was one thing MI6 could provide him with that he couldn’t get himself. Especially here, where his smartphone was the only thing he had access to with more RAM than a calculator.

Information.

If the angels were a hive mind, then the full power of the Internet, combined with the merciless efficiency Q had drilled into his department, might as well have been God Himself.

“No team. James and I have it under control. But if you can find Q-branch techs without anything more important than database cataloguing to do, please direct them to me. I have a bit of a task for them.”

“I can do you one better,” said Tanner. Q could hear the faint tap-tap of keys in the background. “R’s on her lunch break. I can deliver a message to her if you’re wary of leaving electronic footprints.”

Probably a good idea; the encryption on his personal phone was woefully inadequate, something he had been meaning to fix, but never got around to. Well, as soon as he could go home, he would be completely overhauling his security system. Paranoia was a familiar friend at this point. “I need the data from all the weather satellites we can pull access to.”

Tanner whistled. “I know I shouldn’t ask, but does this have anything to do with that meteor storm last week?”

“In a sense,” said Q, cagily. He didn’t want to lie to Tanner, but he couldn’t say any more either. The less Tanner knew, the less danger he would be in. “In any case, the sooner I can have that information, the better. We’re technically supposed to be stuck in the hospital for a few days while double-oh seven recovers, but I suspect we’ll be gone within hours once he wakes up.”

Snorting with laughter, Tanner agreed. “How is he doing?”

“Not too bad, considering the environmental impact.” Considering Q’s impact. “Concussion and compound fracture. As long as he doesn’t climb any mountains within the next few weeks, the doctors say he’ll heal alright.”

“Don’t rule out anything when you’re dealing with that man,” Tanner said wryly. Q could hear his pained grimace over the phone.

“I’ll keep him chained to me if I have to,” replied Q, smiling as he ended the call. Just the knowledge that he was actively doing something, coming up with a plan, made his pulse calm a little more.

He paused when he stepped back into James' room. Nothing had moved since he was in there a few minutes ago, but there was something—a weight, almost, in the stale air. It made him stop in place and listen, taking slow, smooth breaths that were imperceptible even to his ears.

"James, are you awake?" He whispered, unwilling to disturb the silence and break the spell.

“Yes,” was the calm response? Not a trace of sleep in his voice, despite the number of drugs they had pumped into his system. “Status report. Where are we?”

“Funnily enough, Saint James’ Hospital, in Rialto. They airlifted us in.” Q repressed a shudder at the memory. He sat back down on the rickety chair by James’ head, smiling despite the residual feeling of guilt when he saw the pain lacing Bond’s eyes.

First the kidnapping, now this. It seemed like even despite his best intentions, James just kept getting hurt because of him. And James wasn’t a shrinking violet by any means, but it didn’t change the fact that so many of Bond’s problems these days were because of him. Wasn’t he supposed to protect him? Without that, what was Q’s mission? What was his purpose?

“Poor baby.” James tried to sit up, but instead collapsed back into the mound of pillows with a wince. Q’s hands fluttered like birds with the urge to comfort, but the fear that he would agitate a wound. He settled for gripping the edges of the hospital blanket, smoothing away the creases with nervous fingers. He could feel the weight of James’ questioning look, but found that he couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Q? What happened back there?”

Q’s nails dug into the fabric. “It seems like Lucifer gave us more help than we’d asked for.”

James was damnably good at reading between the lines. “You caused the explosion?”

He tilted his head in a small nod, unable to meet James’ eyes. Now the man would tell him “I told you so,” and he would know that Q was the reason he was in that hospital bed.

When warm fingers cupped his chin, Q nearly flinched away, but the firm grip held, and he looked into inexplicably calm eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking—stop it. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Even if I was thinking about how hot you look in bandages?” Q joked weakly.

“I hope not; you look like you’re about to toss your stomach,” James snorted. “This was the best case scenario, all things considered. You do remember that they were about to kill us? And that you dove in front of me, you idiotic, self-sacrificial—”

“Look who’s talking,” Q protested.

James conceded the point with a shrug. “We’re both still alive, so there’s no use in you feeling sorry for yourself.”

“I don’t—!” But James was right. Wallowing in guilt would get them nowhere. So instead, Q clambered onto the bed next to James. There was hardly enough room for two people, but James welcomed the invasion with grace, seeming to realise how much Q needed this bit of closeness right now, to remind himself of how close of a call it had been. James’ torso was bare, littered with plasters and a dark, mottled bruise just below his ribcage. Q skirted that area with the tips of his fingers, drawn despite himself to the evidence of violence.

“So what now?” James murmured, hot breath tickling the shell of Q’s ear. “Heaven, hell, everyone has a stake in what we’re doing. Seems awfully dangerous, does it not?”

“It does indeed,” Q agreed.

“And you have a plan, I presume,” James chuckled. “I know that look in your eyes, Quartermaster mine. What do we do now?”

Q’s phone chirped, and he smiled viciously. “Now? We fight.”


	13. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the long wait! Work's been hectic for the last while. The good thing is, I'm finally making my way back to fandom, and therefore this story! We're more than 2/3rd of the way through, so rest assured that this WILL be finished :)

The Shanghai World Financial Center, at an altitude of 492 meters, was one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. Q had once walked James through a nerve-wracking mission that culminated with Bond leaping out the top floor window and somehow still surviving, in typical Bond fashion. He’d never expected to be on top of the building himself, yet one twelve-hour flight and several harrowing taxi rides later, there they were.

"Why do all your missions have to carry the taint of an exceptionally bad spy movie?" Q grumbled as they strolled past the guards with their backpacks full of explosives and weaponry. Neither guard gave them a second glance; the combination of Bond's obviously expensive suit and his steely "don't fuck with me look" deterred any curiosity. No one noticed the wrist brace that bulged from beneath his sleeve.

"You and I both know that a good number of my missions are too ridiculous for even Hollywood," Bond murmured under his breath. Two tourists actually leapt out of their way, muttering apologies without making eye contact. Q was suddenly very conscious of the sweat stains that must have pooled across his back, and his heat-flushed cheeks that have yet to be mollified by the AC's heavy blast.

He kept his stiff-backed, impassive mask on until they stepped into an empty lift. The moment the doors slid shut behind them, Q sagged against the wall, exhaling noisily. “That was...not fun.”

“Not a good actor?” James teased, pressing the button for the top floor.

“Not at all. The whole time we were down there, I was terrified someone would stop us and ask what we were doing,” Q confessed. Breaking into encrypted servers and cracking government passwords was easy; Q’s understanding of data was at a level beyond anything humans could hope to comprehend. But when it came to physical capabilities, well, some mornings he still tried to brush his teeth with the back of a comb.

James, thankfully, didn’t laugh. “They’re just security guards, Q. If any of them tried to make trouble, I am still capable of killing a mortal man with my bare hands.” As if to demonstrate, he wriggled the fingers of his—thankfully uninjured—hand playfully.

“Fuck, no,” said Q with feeling. “No diplomacy breaches, please. If M gets wind of this, we’ll both be buried in paperwork until we retire.”

James tensed the faintest fraction of a millimeter, and Q realised what he’d said. Of course the Office’s most infamous double-oh agent had no designs on getting out and living to a ripe, old age. It was depressing to think that Bond fully expected his last living sensation to be the oily heat of a bullet punched into the back of his throat. And truth be told, it made Q a little angry. He’d already sacrificed so much to save Bond, over and over again. There was no way he’d be letting go as easily as Bond seemed to expect he would.

Before he had time to voice any of these thoughts, the lift ground to a halt with a soft chime. Q cursed. One of these days, they were going to have a long, detailed discussion about everything in their relationship, from the still-tentative trust to the realisation that he was in love with Bond to the fact that he was not letting him go without a fight, not any time soon.

For now, though, there was a spell to complete.

They stepped out into a silent, seemingly-deserted hallway. This section was lined with glass-walled offices and pine-scented couches that looked like they would be very uncomfortable to sit on. The fax machine still had documents passing through, going off every once in a while with a guttural growl. Everything about it screamed IMPORTANT and EXTREMELY OFF-LIMITS.

Being the type of person he was, Bond just strode off, even stopping for a moment to pour himself a cup of still-warm coffee. Q ran after him, heart pounding wildly, expecting an angel hidden behind every twist of the corridor.

Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? He was the angel, wrapped in Lucifer’s protective spell and still carrying enough grace inside him to blast away a good chunk of the city. James was the one who’d only found out about the existence of angels a few days ago, but somehow, he was treating the threat with about the same level of cavalier bravado as he usually did, bum arm notwithstanding.

“Remember this room?” Bond whispered, nudging Q and pointing towards a nondescript cubicle. “You set off the sprinklers here and electrocuted two terrorists, then yelled at me for getting the documents wet.”

“I yelled at you because you tried using them as an umbrella to keep your suit dry,” Q retorted. Of course he remembered that mission, just like he remembered all of the missions he ran. Human memory what it is, the details only sprang into focus after Bond brought them up, but he remembered now. The layout was a bit different, and they’d completely redecorated the interior after Bond trashed the building so systematically. Still, he could find the pillar that Bond hid behind before he gutted a man, and wasn’t that the window he rappelled out of, ninety-one floors above the ground?

Ah, things were so simple back then.

“That suit was dry-clean only,” James protested, and Q had to cough to stifle his snicker. Suddenly, a flashlight beam made them freeze in their tracks, abruptly serious.

“Is there anyone there?” a masculine voice called out, thickly accented with what Q recognized as the Shaanxi dialect. He glanced at Bond, wide-eyed. Unfazed, Bond simply pulled Q behind a potted plant and they crouched there, hardly breathing, as the footsteps got louder.

A decrepit-looking security guard shuffled by, his rheumatic eyes watering in the pale glow of the flashlight. “I heard voices. Come out now, or you will be prosecuted for trespassing onto private property!” The light skimmed past the top of the plant and Q flinched, but Bond put a finger to his lips, shaking his head and wrapping an arm around Q. It helped, marginally. Q’s adrenaline-shaken knees stopped knocking together quite as much.

The guard walked past the plant, and Bond herded Q sideways in a ridiculous imitation of a crabwalk to keep them out of view. It must’ve worked, because the man’s voice, still muttering about young delinquents, faded gradually as the light grew dimmer. Q had to fight the urge to giggle, as if he and Bond really were two schoolboys, sneaking onto private property for a furtive snog.

“Good thing he left; I try to not make killing the elderly a habit.”

Exactly what Q was thinking. He understood sacrifices in the name of the greater good and all that, but it was hard not to think of the lives of innocent bystanders they’d ruined for Queen and Country.

Q stood watch for the old guard as James knelt beside a non-descript door and began work on picking the lock. The silence was so profound that Q could hear each click as a tumbler locked into place, the scrape of the pick against metal. He just about jumped out of his skin when the door clicked open, but before he could scream, James shoved them both inside and shut the door behind them.

Instantly, heat assaulted them from both sides. “What is this place?” Q spluttered, oppressive clammy wetness pressing into him like a physical attack.

James flipped the light switch, revealing a network of dusty pipes, pressure gauges, and cleaning supplies. “Our ticket to the roof. Careful not to brush against any of the pipes.”

“Thanks, I could’ve figured that out for myself,” Q grunted, doing a (in his opinion) brilliant series of acrobatics across the maze of pipes as he followed after James. A faint hissing was his only warning when a jet of steam blasted out of one of the pipes, missing his face by inches.

“Forgot to mention, sometimes they do that.”

“No matter, it’s only my _face_ ,” Q gritted out. The heat did absolutely nothing to help his nerves, which were already so on edge that if an angel leapt out from the shadows, he’d leap straight out of his body and become a little ghost circling overhead. He could’ve kissed the wall when they reached the other side of the room, where a small, almost unperceivable ladder was mounted.

Q had a brief flashback to Ireland, to clinging onto a rickety fire escape ladder with the wind gusting around him. “No.”

“It’s only a few feet,” James soothed, already five rungs up. Reluctantly, Q followed. Even that had to be better than staying in this hellhole.

He immediately regretted that thought when James pushed open the hatch and a powerful gust of wind rushed through the opening, nearly knocking Q off his feet. Oh, this was such a spectacularly bad idea. One wrong move, and they’d tumble ninety-one floors down. The mountain climbing gear they’d purchased at a street stall seemed painfully inadequate now.

“No one lying in wait?” Q shouted over the mournful howl of the wind.

“Just us up here,” James yelled back, securing himself into a harness and tossing a matching one at Q. In his stupor, Q fumbled and almost dropped it, before awkwardly fitting his legs through the mess of straps and attachments.

“Ever watch any mountaineering when you were up there in the clouds?” James asked conversationally. Q took some small level of comfort in the fact that James seemed proficient at what he was doing; Q would’ve gotten himself tangled in a heartbeat. As it was, he still wasn’t sure if the contraption would be enough to hold both their weight.

One glance down had Q feeling dizzy, like he was about to tip over the edge any second, so instead, he focused on James’ question. “Only the first Everest climb, and I was too concerned over whether Norgay and Hillary would pass out to pay attention to what they were doing with their ropes.”

James hummed, securing them to the building and to each other with a series of carabiners. “I used to go climbing in the Alps with my parents every winter. Trust me, this is much safer.”

“This is coming from the man who kills people from a living,” Q muttered under his breath, too low for Bond to hear.

They took out Molotov bottles that they’d prepared in a stuffy hotel room hours before. Q hoped with all his heart that they wouldn’t be necessary that night, but there was no guarantee. If anything, this would be the angels’ last chance to attack. Gripping Bond’s arms tightly, he slowly raised himself to a hunched-over, standing position, and looked out over the city.

Warm cider light spilled out of doorways. The dark grey sky was eclipsed by a layer of smoke, but the glittering light of downtown Shanghai, never asleep, lit the city in its own artificial glow. It was sort of beautiful, in a way. When humans got tired of looking up and not being able to touch the stars, they built their own. Q could almost pretend he was back in heaven, watching the world go by from his nice, safe perch, if it wasn’t for the way his hair danced wildly in the night air, and the way his skin stretched taut with resistance against the wind.

James handed him the hand carved knife. To be fair, it wasn’t a proper knife so much as a piece of deer’s bone sharpened to an edge. And the crystal decanter was a perfume bottle they’d purchased from a department store. Honestly, Q was a little put out. If he had to be sent on a ridiculous, dangerous quest by an angel he didn’t trust, he’d at least have hoped for the aesthetics to match.

“By the way, Q?” James asked, suddenly.

“Yeah?”

“I should’ve asked this sooner, but how do you propose to see a falling star through all of this air pollution?”

_Dumb luck and a whole lot of math,_ was what Q wanted to say. “The data Q-branch sent over predicts the velocity of the star to the nearest thousandth of a millimeter. If my calculations are correct, the star will be entering the atmosphere in about…” he broke off, pulling James’ sleeve up to look at his Omega watch. “2.16 minutes.”

“I should’ve known you wouldn’t do anything as plebeian as simply wait for the star to show up,” James grinned in admiration. The clear appreciation for his skills warmed Q to the core. Yes, this was what he wanted to be respected for. Not his grace or his rebellion or the fact that he’s got Lucifer’s protection over him. Just the simple, logical world of codes and calculations.

It wasn’t so bad, standing nearly five hundred meters above the ground, if he focused on clinging to James and didn’t wander too close to the edge. For a few moments, they just stood there together, on top of the world, two soldiers staring into the face of the unknown.

That was, of course, when everything began going to hell.

The hatch banged open loudly, and Q whipped around, arms already raised in a defensive position that protected his face and chest. “James, the lighter!” he yelped as a wrinkled hand came into view.

“On it.” The face popped up over the hatch, and to his horror, Q saw the old security guard that had nearly caught them. The man’s formerly stern expression was frozen into a grimace of crisp hatred, muscles tense in that uniquely angelic way that Q had learned to recognize at a glance. He was focused single-mindedly on Q. Undeterred, James pulled out a Molotov, crouched warily behind Q.

The angel smiled, the corners of his mouth pulling up to reveal glistening gums and yellowed teeth in what was more of a grimace than a true smile. “I am not here to attack you.”

“Funny, I’ve heard that one before,” Q ground out. How much time did they have left?

“Then I can drop the niceties.” The angel sprung forward, just as Q yelled, “James, now!” and ducked. As if they’d rehearsed the move a hundred times, James lit the bomb and hurled it at the angel.

The reek of gasoline and petrol was immediate, and Q scrambled back, hacking up the lungful of gunk he’d inhaled. There was not much room to move on the narrow rooftop anyway, but he moved as far away as possible from the burning figure before him.

The guard screamed, flame rushing up his sides like climbing vines. The smell of burning flesh, as well as something a little more otherworldly, like ozone, too strong to ignore. Q could only watch in horror as smoke began rising from his body, his limbs flailing in a desperate attempt to quench the fire.

“Q, it’s almost time!” James’ commanding voice pulled him out of his shock. Right, right. The spell. Never mind the burning man meters away from him, he had a task to complete. With trembling fingers, he lifted the bone knife to the sky, trying to ignore the sound of pained screaming.

A strong hand closed around his wrist and he almost attacked, half feral with fear, but it was only James. He steadied Q’s shaking bones with his own, body heat pressed against him in a move that was not the least sexual and every bit designed to be comforting. “It’s alright. Do the spell.”

Q nodded, taking a deep breath. His mouth caressed the harsh syllable like sweet wine, like a lemon drop that dissolved on the tip of his tongue, and he felt his grace shudder with recognition. The sky seemed to rip itself apart as heat filled his body, entering through the point of the knife and somehow spreading to his every extremity.

“The bottle,” he choked out through lips that felt numb, like he’d touched a battery to them. James handed him the crystal decanter, and he repeated the syllable again, this time barely managing a whisper. Immediately, the peculiar buzzing began to withdraw, swirling into the bottom of the decanter like swollen clouds.

Everything stopped, the quiet somehow eerie after everything that had passed. The body of the old security guard had been reduced to a pile of ashes, collapsed from the inside out by the agonized angel formerly occupying the space. Q could spare a moment of sympathy for the old man, who had only been doing his job.

James, however, had no time for sentiment. “Q, let’s go. They wouldn’t have sent just one.” He removed the bottle carefully from Q’s grasp, tucking it away safely. If the bottle shattered, everything they’d done tonight would’ve been for nothing. So Q nodded, unclipping himself from the harness and climbing back down into the suffocating heat of the boiler room.

They paused at the door. James withdrew another bomb from his pack, hefting its weight in both palms for a minute, before nodding at Q. Q took a deep breath and threw the door open.

  
Just as James had suspected, there were two more angels standing guard by the door. They’d clearly been caught off guard, because they only stared dumbly at the two intruders. Before either of them had a chance to gather their wits, James had already lit the Molotov, and smashed it into Guard One’s face.

“Let’s go!” The angel’s agonized screams were enough to send more running after them, and Guard Two had recovered enough to take a weak punch at Bond. They tore off towards the lifts at a dead sprint, no longer concerned about making noise.

A bullet whizzed past them. Q yelped, but James didn’t flinch, although the line of his mouth got harder. Of course the angels had enough brain cells to possess people with firearms. Of bloody course.

James took out two more bombs, handing one off to Q. Q lit it and tossed it behind him without even checking to see if it had hit his target. Judging from the outraged scream, at least some of the burning liquid must’ve hit his mark.

“The lift?” Q panted as they rushed past the gleaming metallic doors without pause.

“Stairs.”

“You want us to run down ninety-one flights of stairs?” Q cried as they narrowly missed one woman going down an adjacent hallway.

James shrugged without a shred of remorse. “Hope you passed your fitness requirements back home.”

They ducked into the darkened stairwell, in complete darkness without the presence of windows. Their footsteps thundered on the damp cement steps, ears perked for signs of an ambush. Well, at least James was. Q was just focused on his lungs not giving out.

Sixty floors down, Q slumped down, gasping for breath. James stopped and looked back at him.  
“We can’t stop now. C’mon, quartermaster.”

“Just…just gimme a mo’—” They were interrupted by the sound of an explosion, only a few floors up. Without another word, Bond scooped Q onto his back with his good arm and took off running again. The ignominy of the position would’ve rankled, if he had any energy left to be bothered. As it was, he clung to Bond like a baby koala.

Q glanced backwards. “They’re gaining on us.”

“Still a few bombs left,” Bond’s reply was curt, voice betraying only a sliver of strain. His grip on Q continued to slip, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Q was thin enough for his hipbone to be considered an adequate handhold, he would’ve fallen off already. Nodding, even though Bond couldn’t see him, Q dug through the pack for another bomb, gratified when it hit someone in the center of their forehead.

At last they crashed through the first floor door, Q tumbling to the ground as soon as they were through. Alarms blared behind them, but they didn’t look back as they took off into the city, still vibrant with life and oblivious to their plight.

Not a single injury, and an ingredient of the spell collected. Dizzy with relief, Q began to giggle even as Bond pulled them into crowds of people, ignoring angry exclamations and narrowly avoiding collisions with night-hazy tourists.

They finally hopped onto a tourist bus that was just pulling away. Bond tipped the driver a hefty swathe of Chinese yuans, and they were allowed to proceed to the back row unmolested, their only company a slumbering couple draped across each other like matching ribbons.

“As far as your missions go, that was fairly successful,” Q whispered, wary for listening ears despite their apparent solitude. James’ paranoia was rubbing off on him.

“You didn’t do so bad yourself,” James allowed magnanimously. “How did you like your foray into international espionage?”

Q leaned back with a weary sigh. “I need a cup of tea.”


	14. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whispers* I'm terrible at updating please forgive me
> 
> on the bright side, I'm finishing this story today! all chapters have been edited and I'll be posting them all today yay :D

He was dreaming again. He knew it before he’d even opened his eyes. Something about the heavy weightlessness of his limbs, the drowsy sensation of floating in water, made him aware enough of his surroundings to know that this wasn’t reality, but not enough to tip him over the edge into the land of the waking.

“I am pleased with your process thus far.”

“Nice to see you too, Metatron,” said Q without opening his eyes.

“The final task is simple. Patch the hole and divide the realms. Time is of utmost importance. The rebels grow stronger with each passing day, and they must be crushed.”

“You’re giving a lot of orders for someone who can’t be bothered to do the actual work,” said Q, finally sitting up. And—heaven. He was in heaven again, perched atop a familiar cloud with grace singing all around him. Even though he knew it was a dream, he couldn’t help the stretch of his own phantom wings, the muscles still remembering the weight, the resistance. And even through the hostility, he couldn’t help the longing, the certainty of his place in the universe.

“It is not our duty to meddle—”

Q laughed. “It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?” Its superiority rankled, and despite the residual anger, he felt sympathy for Raphael and her group of followers. At the very least, they were actively fighting for a cause, instead of sitting in an ivory tower, waiting for others to do their dirty work. “The Morningstar has a vested interest in Divine politics. An Archangel is living on earth with a small army of lesser angels. Your excuses are nothing but cowardice.”

“How dare you?” The voice boomed, loud enough to be felt in Q’s bones, but he stood his ground. “Let it be remembered that I care nothing for humans and their ephemeral lives. The only reason for you to undertake this quest is to preserve heaven’s integrity.”

“Love. Family. These are things worth fighting for.” Q fought a blush at the utterance of the word _love_ , despite the fact that this was a dream, and he wasn’t even saying it to James.

“You don’t know love. You’re not really one of them, no matter what skin you hide behind,” the Metatron dismissed with ease.

And, ouch. Wasn’t that just an attack on his worst insecurities? The fear that what he felt for James was still a remnant of his mission to protect. The fear that he cared nothing for humans, and the only thing that mattered was his James. Besides, wasn’t it true that it took an Archangel to tell him that he was in love? None of his human coworkers had ever brought up the L-word around them before, and they’d been together for almost a year already. Maybe…

He shook his head. “You’re wrong, and no matter what you think, I’m not doing this for you. I couldn’t care less about what goes on up here anymore.”

“You’ll do your duty when it’s required of you,” said the Metatron. Something about those words rang with the weight of an omen, similar to the first time it had come to Q, foretelling the war three years in advance. But before he could protest, the edges of his vision were already filling with light, and the familiar purr of a sports car drowned out any response he would’ve had.

***

“Anything?” asked James, for the hundredth time that day. Q resisted the urge to chuck a book at him.

“ _They’re working on it_ ,” Q said, extremely slowly and enunciating every word, as if that would make it somehow clearer to James.

The strain of living together in such close proximity was getting to them both. Sure, they’d shared Q’s flat with remarkable civility for two men with such polarizing tastes. But even then, Q’s work as leader of R&D, coupled with James’ tendency to disappear to far away countries every few weeks, meant that they never had time to grow weary of each other’s company.

Now, however, they’d been living out of each other’s pockets for the past few weeks, and it was taxing. Q had never realised how obnoxious Bond could get when he was bored. Oh, sure, he remembered the pre-Q mess: lots of drinking and fucking and exercising until his body was ready to give out. But since Q was not about to let him self-destruct any longer, and since his wrist was still injured, Bond’s list of hobbies had grown markedly shorter.

Besides, there were only so many rounds of sex they could fit into a day before feeling wrung out.

And of course, Q knew that he was not exactly the most accommodating of travel partners himself. He _hated_ the field. It was fun to visit countries he’d only seen from the Heavens, and he’d proven that he was more or less able to hold his own in combat, but a field agent he was not. Everything compounded onto one another did not make for a very pleasant quartermaster.

Still, the ending was in sight. All they had to do was track down the “gate,” as pedestrian as that term implied, and cast the spell. Q had emailed his branch again, asking for unusually dense heat signatures across all seven continents. The amount of data would be massive, but as no one bothered giving them a clue as to where the gate actually was, it was the only hope they had.

“There has to be something we can do while we wait,” James insisted, and Q huffed. He _had_ been doing something, thank you very much. Weather stations continued to report confounding phenomena that had experts baffled. Massive numbers of migratory birds dropping dead in mid-air. Tidal waves in waters that have been calm for centuries.  Q followed each of these stories with a certain amount of morbid fascination, an invisible timer ticking down in his head.

But— _fine_ , anything that would keep the infuriating man out of trouble, he supposed. “What did you have in mind? If you say sex, I’m ignoring you until the data comes in.”

James scoffed, but the slight downturn of his mouth told Q that he would’ve been more than happy to tumble them into bed again. “Actually, I thought we could make a list of everywhere we’ve been ambushed by angels. Everyone likes a good home field advantage; maybe one of those groups chose to stay near the place where most of the energy bled through.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Q admitted, setting his phone down. “Alright, well—Shanghai was the most recent.”

“Unlikely, word’s already spread about your spell by then. I doubt that’s where they’d choose to be if it wasn’t for the chance to kill you.”

“Thanks,” said Q, rolling his eyes at the blasé way James spoke of death. “Alright, next is Raphael and her followers, in Ireland. That’s a good spot, I think. There’s a lot of Old energy trapped in the ground.”

James wrote ‘Ireland’ in large, blocky letters on a napkin. “There is one place that makes more sense than the rest. I’m surprised it wasn’t the first one you brought up.”

“Los Angeles?” asked Q, furrowing his brows. “It’s very modern. Nearly as much as Shanghai. And all those treasure hunters walking around with their metal detectors on the beach…” But now that he thought about it, Samael and Adriel had never explained why they’d lured Q across the Atlantic rather than simply coming to England, especially when he’d still been working on the assumption that heaven had forgotten him by then.

“The City of Angels. Fitting, don’t you think?” James looked triumphant, tapping his pen against the desk in a decidedly superior fashion.

It did make sense. And it would explain the effortless power the two wielded, despite being trapped in a corporeal body. Q had just chalked it up to their dominions as angels of chaos and destruction, but what if that wasn’t the case? What if they’d been drawing power from a disruption in the fabric of time and space?

“Alright, I’ll tell my team to narrow their search to southwestern America,” Q finally decided. “And Ireland, just to be safe.” He pecked Bond on the cheek in thanks, unsurprised when he was suddenly pulled into a firm embrace.

“What did I just say about sex?” said Q, in what he hoped was a commanding tone but really just came out breathy and uncertain.

James wrapped his arms around Q, engulfing him in the familiarity of his cologne, the one that always made Q bury his face in Bond’s shirt. “I don’t remember,” he drawled, peppering butterfly kisses over the shell of Q’s ear. “Do remind me again.”

“No sex,” said Q, without conviction.

“No sex?”

Q had to fight to stifle a moan when a hand slid under his shirt, dancing over one nipple. He sniffed at Bond’s cologne in a show of reluctance when his lips drew away from Q’ ear and instead nuzzled against his three days’ collection of stubble. Honestly, they’d only _just_ exchanged blowjobs not two hours ago. The _nerve_.

Well...maybe just one more time—

Which was of course, when Q’s phone decided to ring.

“Thank god for that, I was beginning to forget what it felt like to be cockblocked by a hunk of metal,” James grumbled in good humour, letting Q clamber off his lap to check on the data.

The screen only held a few words. Succinct, in R’s usual brisk, no-nonsense manner. Q scanned the screen with a victorious glance, before brandishing it like a torch and waving it at James.

“Good news?”

“Good and bad. The good part is, you were right. The disturbance is in Llano, a small town in the Northeastern part of Los Angeles.”

“And what’s the bad news?” James asked with a raised brow, hand going automatically to the place at the small of his back where he usually kept his gun.

“A direct flight lasts twelve hours.”

 


	15. Chapter 14

“This is…”

“Underwhelming?” Q supplied. Despite the power he could feel with every step he took, he couldn’t help but agree. James had tried to distract Q on the plane by listing a series of possible places where the gates could be. They’d known better to expect a lavish set of golden gates in the middle of the downtown square, obviously, but neither had they expected browned shrubs and a pile of rubble.

Watching James toss loose stones into the center of the ruins like he was provoking a bear, Q felt a pang of longing in his heart. It made no sense; they’d spent more time together in these last few days than they’d ever had, even when they were both on leave. But standing there beside his boyfriend of nearly a year, Q felt a curious sensation of loneliness.

Maybe it was the secret of his love, burning away inside of him every time he remembered Raphael’s knowing gaze. He’d been able to brush it aside at the time, but the more he tried to forget it, the more it took over his mind.

What would it be like, if he just said those words to James right now? He snuck a peek at the man, at the way sunlight honeyed his skin and turned his hair to gold. The sight was enough to make a lump rise to his throat.

“You’re staring.” James said, without turning to face Q. He didn’t smile, but his eyes crinkled, revealing a collection of crow’s feet that made him look nothing like the hardened agent of double-oh seven. “What’s the matter?”

Q stroked careful fingers along James’ jawline. He wanted to remember this moment. “Nothing. Let’s end this.”

Half expecting an army to descend and surround them, Q took out the carefully wrapped decanter. “I expected there to be more fanfare,” he joked, hefting the solid weight of the glass in his hands as he moved towards a slab of stone at the center of the ruin. The bottle began to shake as he moved, the misty fog inside it pounding against the glass as it resonated with the energy of the site.

“I’m going to stand over here,” said James, moving away to a safe distance. “Don’t want to be turned into a toad—or whatever you angels do with unsuspecting humans that stumble upon your ritual grounds.”

“See you on the other side.”

With those words, Q smashed the bottle against the stone. The stone lit up, similar to the way his body glowed after receiving Lucifer’s kiss, and turned a shade of silver, patterns swirling sedately on its surface. Q glanced at James, who shot him a thumbs up.

Now, for the moment of truth. Q hadn’t used his grace in years, but he’d grown attached to the last sliver of his grace, like some backup weapon tucked away as a last resort. There was also that sense of loss, that this really was the point of no return.

He would age. He would be completely and utterly mortal, closed off forever to the multitudes of other worlds that would be just out of reach.

He would have nightmares of falling for the rest of his life.

“It’s not too late to stop,” said James, sensing Q’s hesitation. “We still have time; if you’re not ready to give up your grace, we can look for another fallen angel.”

Something in Q’s heart melted. There were people at MI6 who whispered about how cold Bond was, how machines had more capability for emotion than him, but moments like this proved how deeply his empathy ran. And if he had to get old, at least he would get the chance to grow old with this wonderful man. He smiled at James in reassurance, and called to the grace in his body.

It tried to resist, as if it knew what Q was calling it out for. But Q grabbed onto the edges of the tendrils, like catching smoke with his bare hands, and teased the delicate strands of power outwards. As the grace touched the edge of his skin, his forehead blazed, and he knew instinctively that Lucifer’s mark had latched on to the grace. He inhaled deeply, preparing to draw the last remnants out.

“No, Qaphsiel!”

Startled, he spun around. Small figures in the distance were sprinting towards him, including one very familiar set of pigtails. He cursed. Hannah. Raphael and her army had gotten here just in time.

“Q, stop, you’re making a huge mistake!” The desperation in her voice made him hesitate, stumble and glance over uncertainly.

“Don’t let them distract you,” James shouted.

There was no time to vacillate, no time to second guess. Q shut his eyes and pushed with all his strength.

_Waves roared in his ears._

_Mountains took root in his lungs._

_The entire history of human existence flashed before him, as clear and straightforward as the pages of an open book._

_How could he have forgotten this feeling? He was sound. He was fury. He was the silence before a piercing scream. He was everywhere and nowhere at once. And there was so much input, so much rage crawling over this body—how could one vessel contain such multitudes?_

_Q was nothing, no one. He was Qaphsiel, the watcher of heaven. And he would lay waste to all that opposed him._

“Q, can you hear me?”

_Don’t insult me with that name, he wanted to say, but could not seem to speak. Q was a simple letter in the Latin alphabet, a language system as insignificant as a gnat to a man. It had no meaning. It could not._

“Q, sweetheart, I need you to focus on my voice.”

_He knew that voice. But from where?_

“Focus, Q. You can do it. It’s me. Bond.”

_Bond James Bond forty two years old royal naval commander order of Saint Michael and Saint George military intelligence agent designation 007—_

_No, no, those were the_ details _. But who is James Bond?_ Somewhere, at the edges of his memories, fragments of images appeared.

_sunlight melting across scarred skin_

_hands firm with intent_

_soul exploding across the field of his vision like a sunburst_

and Qaphsiel fell, all over again.

He tried to concentrate on James, but it was hard. Shockwaves from the wings of a butterfly in Southern Iran rippled through his seventy-second plane of awareness. It was easier when James spoke, but he still could not figure out which muscles to move to displace air and communicate his need.

“Q. Darling. You need to hear her out, alright? This is very important.”

Who was this ‘her’? Q didn’t want to listen to anyone. He wanted the burning inside of him to stop. He wanted some way to relieve the terrible pressure pressing against every bit of his flesh. He wanted James. James James James James James…

“There’s an immense amount of grace inside of you right now—” Q’s senses kicked into overdrive at that hateful voice.

_Archangel. Destroy. Heaven’s most devastating weapon._

_And the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear._

Something exploded, in perfect sync with the death of a supernova, and there were shouts of warning. “He doesn’t want to listen to me,” that voice continued, a touch of fear reverberating at the junction of tongue and teeth. He glowed with righteous anger.

_Protect James._

“Let me try.” Oh, Q knew this voice. Haniel, was it? No, she was an empty vessel, stripped of power. Hannah. Yes. Hannah. He lowered his shields the slightest of millimeters.

“Hello, yes, Q. You understand me, don’t you?” _Yes_ , he would’ve said, if he was in possession of his faculties. But she continued. “As we were saying, the spell only partially did what you wanted it to. The way to heaven is sealed, but you robbed each of them of their graces. Every angel in heaven is effectively powerless.”

But—no—that’s not what was supposed to happen. He’d only wanted them all to leave him alone. Why would Metatron do this?

Unless.

 _Lucifer,_ he screamed into the farthest reaches of his awareness, at that awful, deadened place reeking of sulphur and despair. _You did this_.

 _I only gave you the tools to achieve what you needed to_ , replied the dizzying voice in a tone that carried with it the faintest laces of absinthe and opium.

“It’s alright, Q. We can deal with the fallout later.” James. Lovely, protective James. Still defending him even now.

“But there’s too much energy in you right now. You need to get rid of it. Forget heaven, there’s nothing you can do for them now.”

_Yes, dispel the energy. But you can’t, can you? There’s enough inside you to annihilate this earth. You can’t get rid of it. Pouring this much energy into an empty vessel would destroy it. Look what it almost did to you._

_You’re saying that the only angel I can give this to is…_

It chuckled. _Quid pro quo._

No, that couldn’t be the only option. If Lucifer had that kind of power—but he couldn’t keep it himself either. Already, he could feel the edges of his body falling apart, the atoms vibrating too rapidly to be kept in place. Minutes, hours, days, it didn’t matter. He was a walking atom bomb.

There was no other option.

Was there?

He could still feel heaven. It was just a place now, devoid of power. Like an empty vessel, almost, crying to be filled up. He could hear the cries of the angels trapped in heaven, the confusion and chaos making his spine buzz with sympathy.

So maybe this was one thing he could do for them. He’d had four years on earth. And of those, three glorious, dizzyingly beautiful years with the man he was in love with. That was more time than some people got in a lifetime, wasn’t it?

Q had only been alive for four years, but Qaphsiel had existed for billions.

He could do this.

Testing his resolve, he relaxed the hold over his body infinitesimally, releasing a bit of grace back into heaven. Fissures of light appeared all over his body.

 _No, Qaphsiel, you wouldn’t dare—_ Q blocked Lucifer out.

James was saying something. Q saw his figure at the edges of his vision. Already, bursts of light danced over his eyes, turning James into washed-out drops of colour. There was so much more that he wanted to say to him. _Sorry I have to go like this. Sorry I took so long to tell you who I really was. I wish you could’ve taken us to Iceland; I’d have loved to travel the world with you._

But in the end, there was only one thing that needed saying. And as he thought of those three words, he suddenly remembered how to work that part of his anatomy, the precise dance of the throat and tongue.

“I love you,” he said.

Closing his eyes because he could not bear to see the betrayal in James’ eyes, Q relaxed, letting everything disintegrate into one final burst of light.


	16. Chapter 15

He wasn’t...alive. Not in the strictest sense of the word.

But then, he obviously wasn’t dead either.

All of his senses seemed to be missing. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t make a sound.

Was this what death was like for angels? Endless expanses of nothing? It hardly seemed fair; humans got to conjure up everything they fancied when they went to heaven. Even in hell, there was some sort of torment to stimulate the senses. But then, God had never intend for His angels to die.

How much time had passed? Seconds, hours, days. Had James forgotten him yet? The absence of pain at that thought was more torturous than he could’ve imagined. No, no, don’t think about him. For all he knew, the universe could’ve crumbled into stardust and all he could do was float around this huge vat of nothing.

To pass the time, he began reciting Great Expectations in binary. If he had the rest of eternity to spend in isolation, he might as well start somewhere.

He was only part-way through the part where Pip ransacked his aunt’s pantry when a bolt of agony ripped through his mind. Gods, what _was_ that? He tried to get his mind to calm down, in an effort to dispel the pain, but it just kept coming in waves and waves. Arrhythmic waves, in various degrees of intensity and frequency.

Almost like speech.

 _Hello, is someone talking to me?_ He thought, clenching his awareness through the pain and trying to make his thought as clear as possible. Never mind that mind reading was effectively impossible. After the sort of day he’d had, nothing could surprise him anymore.

The pain stopped, and if he had any way to physically express his confusion, he would have. But now that he’d noticed it, he felt a sort of heavy presence around him. Not a particularly malicious or friendly presence, but simply there.

The presence seemed to pause thoughtfully. Q was starting to believe he’d made the whole thing up out of some sensory deprivation-induced madness when a clear voice rang out.

_I do apologize. It isn’t easy, remembering to modulate every aspect of sound in every dimension._

_I used to have that problem myself_ , Q allowed graciously. There wasn’t any use keeping a grudge in the afterlife. _Caused a few avalanches in the centuries after my creation, but eventually you remember to be vigilant._

 _A wise lesson,_ the voice commented. Q got the distinct feeling that the—they—whatever it was, it was studying him. What was curious was that Q wasn’t consumed by burning curiosity at the mysteriousness of his companion’s sudden appearance. Instead, he just felt a sense of calm. Well-being.

But Q did wish that he could meet this stranger face to face. Its voice carried with it the anonymity of a whisper. _Who are you?_ He asked, hoping the question wasn’t offensive to the stranger. _Male, female, neither? Are you dead, like me? Or still alive?_

The voice did sound amused at that. _Yes._

Q huffed. _Alright, well, do you know how James is? He’s got to be terrifically angry at me for dying right now._

_Ah yes, James Bond._

_So you do know him!_ said Q, delighted.

_In a vague sense. I’d hoped you could tell me more about him._

Q cast his mind about in the mental approximation of a shrug. _What’s there to tell? He works in espionage. He’s got a whole rack of suits he keeps on display and never wears. He’s rubbish at doing the laundry because he’s used to sending everything off to the cleaners and never remembers to separate the colours from the lights—_ he broke off there, as a fresh wave of that not-pain, hollow feeling washed over him.

 _And you feel…emotions for him._ It was neither a question nor a condemnation. Nevertheless, Q squirmed in embarrassment.

_I love him._

He wondered why he was telling such personal things to a complete stranger. A stranger who he knew nothing about, who had dismissed Q’s questions like they were morning mist. But at the same time, it felt so good to say those words. Bittersweet, but oddly freeing. Why hadn’t he said them earlier? Perhaps James would have said them back, and he could carry that memory with him forever instead of the pain of wondering what he would’ve said in response.

_I’ve wondered about that. How is it that you developed this...love? I’d believed that angels were above such base emotions._

Q laughed without humour. _Why do any of us do anything?_ But the presence seemed dissatisfied with his response, so he tried again.

 _At first it was just innocent curiosity._ He smiled to himself, wistful, as he thought of those days, tinged with the haze of dreamlike surrealism. _He had the most beautiful soul—you’ve seen it._ A brief sound of acknowledgement, and Q continued. _I enjoyed watching him. I mean, it was part of my job, but he was the one human I kept returning to. And I couldn’t understand it at first. Why was I so drawn to this human, who killed other human so effortlessly, who poisoned himself with drink and pills?_

As he spoke, the scene unfolded before him again, as easily as if he had been carrying it in his back pocket for all these years. The desperation, the car crash panic when he realised that might be the last time he ever saw James Bond alive. The flame and the chaos and the shrill screech in his heart as he fell.

The first time he met Bond in person, mesmerized by the rough scratch of his chin. The easy banter that came so naturally to him when they’d met again at the gallery. The thrill that no battle could ever imitate when James looked at him with those blue blue blue eyes and that imperfectly beautiful soul and asked him to dinner the first time. In hindsight, it seemed ludicrous that he might’ve _not_ fallen for James. He couldn’t imagine a world where they didn’t find their way to each other.

When he finished his messy ramble of disjointed emotions and facts, the voice stayed silent for a good few minutes.

 _I don’t expect you to understand,_ said Q. _But I don’t regret any of it. I don’t regret him, no matter what damage came from it. I suppose I’m sorry for that._

 _There’s no need to be sorry. After all, you’ve saved them all._ There was a touch of pride in that voice that warmed Q to the core.

 _Not really,_ Q grimaced. _The war in heaven isn’t over yet. All I’ve done was temporarily bollocks everything up for both sides._

_You stopped Lucifer from taking over. That sounds like a victory to me. As for heaven, they will take time to recuperate. Regain their power. Millennia will pass before they are able to continue this squabble. It is my hope that by then, they will have...grown up enough to not turn disagreements into civil wars._

If he was able to, Q would have laughed at the imagery that brought, the most feared beings in heaven being spoken of as if they were disobedient children. _I doubt it. You can’t exactly hand wave a decree by God._

 _Decrees can always be rewritten._ The casual blasphemy stunned Q, but he didn’t contest it. He himself was hardly in a position to speak of disobedience.

 _So that’s it._ Q mused. _But what about me? Will I be here forever?_

_That’s up to you._

And. Q _did_ feel a bit of outrage at that. _It’s hardly my choice to have been turned into a disembodied voice!_

 _That’s not what I meant,_ the voice chided, and Q sulked. _You can stay here until you feel that you’ve done penance for your actions, but personally, I doubt that would help anyone. You could return to heaven as an archangel. No being would dare speak against you after the salvation you have delivered. Or, of course…_

_Or?_

_Or you can become human. Really, truly, human, never affected by heaven again. You can live a full life with your human, and revel in the knowledge that heaven will accept you without question when you both pass on. Recrafting a body would be hard, and extremely painful, but it can be done._

Hope welled up inside him, overflowing like a flooded lake. Which, of course, made Q suspicious. _Who_ are _you? What right do you have to promise me these things? I am not making another deal with the devil._

_What do you choose?_

_That doesn’t answer my question. Resurrection—it’s beyond the scope of anything I’ve ever heard of._

The voice actually had the gall to snort. _This offer will not be made to you again. It takes an immense amount of power to force so many atoms back together. But you claim that you love him, and I believe that may be a strong enough force to bring you back to him._

Q hadn’t had much luck with impulse decisions and misguided deals lately, but he just couldn’t, _wouldn’t,_ let the chance slip past him. _Fine. You know what I’ll choose. James. Always James._

 _So mote it be._ And the sensation of exploding, of splitting apart, reversed itself. Q screamed as his body—his _body_! took form and began to constrict, feeling like it was being squeezed through the opening of a hose. Sinew and bone molded itself, confining him within their cage, and he knew that this would be the way it was from now on. He still couldn’t see much yet, but fuzzy cones of light began taking shape, and through the mind-numbing tightness, he sought the face of his saviour.

_Will I ever meet you again?_

The voice laughed, and even through his diminished senses, Q could hear the way it cut through the air with intent, as powerful as a deep-flowing river. _My child, I’ve always been with you._

 

***

“Q…”

“Q, darling, please wake up.”

He groaned, the sound lodging in his throat like a tough bit of gristle. He was really starting to get sick of the sensation of waking up in agony, every bit of him from head to toe feeling as if it was put through the wringer.

“Love? Is that you?” Oh, he recognized that voice, didn’t he?

“You called me ‘love’,” he accused weakly, cracking his eyes open a bit. He instantly regretted it. The sun had already set, but even the faint streaks of light from the moon were enough to hurt his delicate retinas.

“Oh, thank god.” Bond choked on a sob, and no, that couldn’t be right. James Bond didn’t cry, even after several rounds of torture with a syndicate of human traffickers. Biting back the leaden sensation in his limbs, Q raised a hand, touching it to the age-worn skin of his lover. Sure enough, there were drops of moisture.

Q smiled weakly. “Yes, thank Him indeed.” Oh, James had no idea, did he? His memories of the afterlife were already beginning to blur, but Q silently vowed to himself that he would never forget the secrets he’d confessed there. Whatever obstacles were tossed in their way in the future, he would remember the certainty he felt, that choosing James was always going to be the end goal.

A sudden thought made him pause. “Hannah...Raphael...are they still here?”

“No, they disappeared. Literally disappeared into a bunch of fireworks. What happened to them?”

“New organization strategy in heaven. I doubt we’ll be seeing them again for some time.” Q snuggled into James’ chest as the man picked him up, cradling him with uncharacteristic gentility. “Never mind them. They’ll be fine. Call me ‘love’ again.”

“I can do you one better,” James joked, holding him tightly as they walked away from the ruins, as if he was afraid that Q would break apart again. “I love you, you bloody, reckless moron. Don’t you dare do that to me again.”

Q sighed in contentment, fingers curling into the creases of Bond’s shirt, clinging on. Anchoring himself in the moment. “Never again.”

They walked along in silence for a few moments. Not the quiet, companionable sort of silence, but the kind that arises when there are no words for the weight of everything that hung between them. Despite that, Bond’s embrace was reverential, and Q, drowsy with exhaustion, thought about the best way he could make things right.

“Bond?”

“Yes?”

“Have I ever told you about the day I was created?”

It wasn’t much, but it was a start.


	17. Epilogue

_they say war is hell,_

_so peace should be holy_

_but darling, the only thing i ever held sacred_

_was your name in my mouth (_ [ _x_ ](http://scottsunmers.tumblr.com/post/118252135703/they-say-war-is-hell-so-peace-should-be-holy) _)_

 

_***_

 

“James, I’m beginning to feel rather faint,” complained Q, though he made no effort to emerge from the steaming pool of water in which he was currently immersed.

“Drat,” Bond teased. “You’ve foiled my plans for a slow-roasted Q dinner.” Despite the apparent brush-off, Bond stood up and stretched, rays of light from the brilliant Icelandic sun glimmering off his body. They had been in the country for a week, Saelingsdalur for four hours, and already Q was half in love. The beauty was almost surreal; harsh cliff faces interrupted by dreamlike wisps of clouds. The surface of the geothermal pool where they lounged rolled with mist. For the past few minutes, they had amused themselves by attempting to gather the thick swathes in their hands.

The stress of the heavenly war seemed but a nightmare now. Sure, Q was still weak on his feet; apparently, his limbs had reverted to a childlike state of clumsiness without grace to facilitate his movements. And some nights Bond still woke him up, desperately needing to make sure that Q was still alive. But more often than not, there was the newfound intimacy, fragile in its uncertainty. The first time James talked to him about his parents, stumbling over the bittersweet words in a low, hesitant tone, Q knew that they would be okay.

They were still scarred, but they were healing.

James distracted him with a warm hand, brushing sopping bangs back from his forehead. He smiled easily at Q, who even now could not help the reduction of blood flow to his stomach resulting from the release of adrenaline—butterflies. They were butterflies. Q leaned in impulsively and kissed him, the brush of skin on skin light as air.

“Ready to get out?” James asked, though not before reciprocating with a deeper, caramel-rich kiss of his own.

Q took a deep breath, bracing himself before nodding. “Run!” he yelled, before flinging himself out of the water, into the icy blast of the Icelandic climate. The cold air was a punch to the stomach, and he clung to James for body heat even as they stumbled toward the blessed heat of their lodge, each man clad only in a pair of scanty swimming trunks.

Their lungs hurt from laughing when they burst through the door, earning a few curious-yet-indulgent looks. The receptionist seemed under the impression that they were on their honeymoon. Which—to be fair, they’d been almost nauseatingly touchy for the entire duration of their stay.

And wasn’t that a thought? A honeymoon…

Q shook his head, smiling wryly. One day at a time.

“Mad, absolutely mad,” said James, accepting a pair of heated towels gratefully from a straight-faced concierge and tossing one at Q, who made a beeline for the crackling fireplace immediately.

“Mmm, I think this is the part where you offer to warm me up.” Q sighed in contentment, leaning so close to the fire that the glowed washed his pale skin into shades of warm cinnamon and amber. The other guests ignored them, most of them too wrapped up in their own stories to heed the way two of the most powerful people in Great Britain, quite possibly in the whole world, made cow eyes at each other.

James shook his head, eyes darkened with interest. “You’ve been watching too many of those TV dramas.”

“I can’t help it,” Q protested. During his recovery, James had taken away all of his electronics in fear of a drug-induced global takedown, and Q had been confined to the tedium of daytime soaps. He’d quickly discovered a fascination with them that left James in equal parts amusement and horror. Sliding a hand up Bond’s thigh, he added mischievously, “But by all means, I demand to hear one of your famous James Bond lines.”

“How about, keep doing that and we won’t make it to a bed,” James growled, but made no effort to move away from Q’s touch. They were lucky they were in a corner, and Q’s movements were just subtle enough to avoid detection by the busy workers. Feeling playful, Q continued moving up the firm slab of muscle, inching past the bottom hem of the trunks to paw at his bollocks.

James hissed. “Bloody cold.” After a furtive glance around, he pulled Q up, giving him a sharp smack on the arse. “C’mon, minx. Our room. Now.”

They crashed through the door in a tangle of limbs, skin meeting skin meeting skin in a chaotic whirlwind of movement. In their haste, James nearly tripped over an empty suitcase and stumbled, bringing Q down with him with simultaneous squawks of surprise and indignation.

Q had no time for a witty comment, because James’ lips were already on him and all he could do was accept the burning kisses that seared his nerves. He parted his mouth in a deep sigh, letting the pressure stain his lips berry red.

Sometimes when James kissed him like this, he believed he could still see heaven.

“I want you inside me,” he breathed out, so close to James that their eyelashes were almost brushing. When James groaned they fluttered up and down like little comet tails.

“With pleasure. Q. With pleasure.” Ever the man of economy, James stripped off Q’s swim bottoms in one movement, peeling them off his damp skin with truly impressive speed. Q didn’t even try to hide his hunger when James was naked as well, that gorgeous cock in its thatch of golden curls bared to his gaze. He groaned when James took the organ in his hand, giving it a few strokes that made it bounce gently.

He wanted that cock in his arse, but he also wanted to taste that intoxicating blend of salt and musk that made him feel like he was drowning in James. Q crawled down the length of James’ torso, intent clear as he smirked at James., getting a harsh ‘ _fuck’_ as his reward. A scripture phrase came into his mind, unbidden, when he nuzzled into the soft hair near the man’s groin.

“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” Q whispered, hands fluttering with the urge to put them everywhere.

James inhaled sharply. “Quoting scripture? That’s much hotter than it should be.”

Q grinned, lips stretching around James’ cock as he sucked happily. Each reaction he wrenched from James’ body was like a blessing, from his hisses of pleasure to the way his thigh muscles jumped when Q deep-throated him, sucking down his entire length and setting an unpredictable, stuttered rhythm.

A hand on his hair pulled him away, and he licked at the drops of precum smeared across his lips. “Lube?” Bond asked gruffly, and Q pointed at the second drawer of the bedside dresser

The first finger inside him was a flash of lightning, thick finger stretching him apart with a barely-there ache. “I have decked my bed with coverings of tapestry,” Q gasped.

Two fingers. “With carved works—” another, and he felt so full, so engulfed by James’ presence. He broke off momentarily for another of those sweetly possessive kisses. “—with fine linen of Egypt.”

“Or overfluffed hotel duvets,” said James, sliding in slowly. Q immediately clenched down around him and felt the cock twitch inside him. James set a harsh rhythm, rough slide in and out dragging around Q’s inner walls, setting his nerves ablaze. He couldn’t move away under James’ burning gaze, under the firm hands that pinned him down without resistance. Under the onslaught, it was clearer to him than ever before that he belonged to James. That James belonged to him. That this was where they were meant to be, forever.

“Keep talking,” James half demanded, half pleaded. At this point Q could hardly think with the heady pleasure that engulfed his senses like sweet wine, but the familiar verses flowed out of him like a song heard on the cusp of sleep.

“I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.” And James was panting, and he was panting, bodies smashing into each other again and again. “Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning: let us solace ourselves with loves.”

“Come unto me,” he gasped, fingers dug deep in James’ back and the man obliged, pumping him full of warmth. The milky liquid, like baptism to his body, sent him over the edge. “James!” he wailed, toes curling with the intensity of his orgasm. Through the stars waltzing through his wrung-out mind he savoured the taste of that name on his tongue. James. James. James. A single syllable that contained multitudes. One name that meant everything to him.

Of all the holy songs Q had panted into the sheets, James’ name was the holiest word he spoke.

They curled around each other on the ruined bed, Q could feel the cum dripping out of him, leaking all over his thighs and bollocks but couldn’t spare the strength to clean up. His whole body buzzed pleasantly with post-sex adrenaline and he shivered, moving closer to James for body heat.

Bond, ever so accommodating, threw a lazy arm around Q. “I confess, I’d half expected a bolt of thunder to strike us down.”

 

Q chuckled. He’d told James about his run-in with God. He suspected that James only half believed him; not that he could blame him. If anyone had told Q that the Creator would personally bring him back to life after he exploded himself for the greater good, he would’ve sent them directly to psych. “Perks of being buddies with the Big Man upstairs,” he preened.

“My celebrity angel.”

They made idle chatter about plans for the rest of the trip. James wanted to go to Landmannalaugar and climb the Rhyolite Mountains, which were supposed to be unparalleled in beauty. Q just wanted to go whale watching. Even though he could no longer understand their language, their melancholy songs calmed him. They bickered good-naturedly for a while, conversation lulling places as they threatened to nod off into sleep. James was just into a vivid description of the ice caves in the mountains when a soft knock interrupted.

“Dibs not,” Q grumbled, pulling the blanket over his head. With a good natured huff, James got up. Q hoped he’d remember to put some clothes on, although it’s very likely that he wouldn’t bother. James Bond was not a creature of modesty.

After a short, flurried conversation in Icelandic, the door shut again. Q peeked out over the blankets to see James with a letter in his hands, frowning thoughtfully. “Who’s it from?”

James handed the letter over. “No idea, but it’s addressed to you.”

“What?” Sure enough, the letter ‘Q’ was printed on the creamy paper in a neat script devoid of any flourishes. Q tore the envelope open, revealing a single piece of heavy paper. “It’s from Hannah!” he exclaimed, and James sat beside him, reading over his shoulder.

_Q—_

_You might be interested to know that heaven is under new management. No more wars, no more destruction, I promise. But don’t be alarmed if you hear of a few minor miracles here and there. Give James my blessing and I hope you two have found peace once more._

_Hannah/Haniel_

_P.S please keep the blaspheming down. You may not be an angel anymore but you are still very loud._

Q rolled his eyes. “Bloody voyeurs.” But he was smiling as well, at the promise contained in that simple note.

Finally, there was peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it's over! Thanks for sticking with me through my first foray into writing a longfic, and being patient with my terrible updating habits <3


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